Description
Book SynopsisConsiders how national fantasy has been constructed through a wide range of narratives that have described rocks and landscape not merely as inert substances but moving living beings. -- .
Trade Review‘Does the land beneath our feet define us? Do place have inherent meaning, and if so where do those meanings come from? Shelley Trower's exciting new study, Rocks of Nation, brings together poetry and fiction with geology, folklore, the Gothic, Celtic mysticism and nationalist identity, to offer a long view on Cornwall and the literature of place.’
Liz Edwards, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies,
National Library of Wales, British Society for Literature and Science
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Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Primitive rocks: the Geological Societies of London and Cornwall, Humphry Davy and sublime mineral landscapes
2. Rocks and race: geological folklore and Celtic literature, from Cornwall to Scotland
3. On the cliff edge of England: trembling rocks in sensation fiction and empire Gothic
4. Haunted houses and prehistoric stones: savage vibrations in ghost stories and D. H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo
5. Living stones and the earth: dreams of belonging in Cornish nationalist and new age environmental writing
6. Clay: de-composed granite in Jack Clemo’s anti-nationalist writing
Conclusion
Index
