The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place 1730–1840
An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare

This 1972 text takes John Clare as the focus of different attitudes to landscape as something to have a 'taste' for.

John Barrell (Author)

9780521181327, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 February 2011

262 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.34 kg

It is generally agreed that in the early eighteenth century people began to be interested in landscape as something to have a 'taste' for; that they saw landscape through the eyes of the great painters, and that later pictures, poetry and landscape gardening all reflect that taste. Dr Barrell examines this interest, showing how the taste for landscape affected the poetry in detail. John Clare, who lived most of his life in rural Northamptonshire, whose landscape was being transformed by enclosure, is then taken as the focus of these different attitudes. Clare's truthfulness to the individual locality he wanted to describe would not permit him to use the conventional literary language of his predecessors, and he had instead to find his own language. His success in doing this removed him from mainstream English poetry. This 1972 text brings 'taste' into contact with the social and economic bases of life.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introductory note
1. The idea of landscape in the eighteenth century
2. The landscape of agricultural improvement
3. The sense of place in the poetry of John Clare
Appendix: John Clare and the enclosure of Helpston
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]