Landscape and Literature 1830-1914 Nature, Text, Aura

by Ebbatson, Roger

• ISBN13: 9781137330437
• ISBN10: 1137330430
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781137330444
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-05-24
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• More Book Details
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Summary

This study offers an exciting new perspective on a range of literary texts of the 19th and early 20th centuries, exploring their vital but problematic depiction of nature. It offers the reader seminal re-readings of a variety of texts, notably Tennyson, Hardy, Jefferies and Edward Thomas, by placing their work in an original and illuminating cultural context. Framed by reference to a range of philosophical ideas, notably the Frankfurt School concept of 'aura', but also the Heideggerian reading of the 'destitution' wrought by technology, and the phenomenological concept of 'immersion' in the natural environment, this book will be of interest to both the student of literature, ecology and philosophy.

Author Biography

Roger Ebbatson is currently Visiting Professor at Lancaster University, UK, having previously held appointments at the University of Sokoto, Nigeria, the University of Worcester, and Loughborough University. His publications include Lawrence & the Nature Tradition, Hardy: Margin of the Unexpressed, An Imaginary England, and Heidegger's Bicycle. He is a Fellow of the English Association, and member of the editorial boards of the Tennyson Society and the Hardy Society, and of the executive council of the Jefferies Society.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Shifting Landscape
PART I: TENNYSONIAN
1. 'The Sea-Fairies': The Sirens and the Administered Society
2. 'Impassioned Song': Arthur Hallam and Lyric Poetry
3. Locksley Hall: Progress and Destitution
4. 'The Northern Farmer': Language and Homeland
5. Charles Tennyson Turner: Lyricism and Modernity
PART II: HARDY, JEFFERIES, RUSKIN
6. Far From the Madding Crowd: Swampy Decomposition and Female Individualism
7. 'In Front of the Landscape': Spectral Ressentiment
8. 'A Singer Asleep': Hardy's Envoi to Decadence
9. The Machine in the Wheatfield
10. Prophetic Landscapes: Hardy and Jefferies
11. The Springs of Wandel: Ruskin, Proust, Benjamin
PART III: THE SOUTH COUNTRY
12. Traversing the South Country, 1850-1914
13. The Spiritual Geography of Edward Thomas
Bibliography