Description
Book SynopsisElizabeth Helsinger's iconoclastic book explores the peculiar power of rural England to stand for conflicting ideas of Britain. Despite the nostalgic appeal of Constable's or Tennyson's rural scenes, they record the severe social and economic disturbances of the turbulent years after Waterloo. Artists and writers like Cobbett, Clare, Turner, Emily
Trade Review"Helsinger's discussions of images and texts offer new and important insights into the political and cultural uses of the countryside, and they will essential reading for anyone interested in that history of this period. While it is impossible to do justice to the scope, interest, and nuance of her arguments, this review must suffice to say that this is the kind of book students of British landscape painting and literature will turn to again and again with pleasure and profit."--Albion
Table of ContentsLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi INTRODUCTION Land and the Nation 3 PART I: ICONS AND AUDIENCES CHAPTER ONE Constable: The Making of a National Painter 41 CHAPTER TWO Out of the Heart of the Country: Tennyson's English Idyls 65 PART II: CONTESTED GROUND CHAPTER THREE Cobbett's Radical Husbandry 103 CHAPTER FOUR Clare and the Place of the Peasant Poet 141 CHAPTER FIVE Turner's England and Wales 162 CHAPTER SIX Bronte's Ghosts 175 RETROSPECT Eliot's Risky History 217 NOTES 239 INDEX 283
