Hunt Green Earths Rural Chronicles dissertation 1991 (original) (raw)

In Place of Nature – A Response to Leigh Woods

This paper reflects on an art project developed by the author which was commissioned for the exhibition STILL LIFE/ecologies of perception in 2013 by Trust New Art . The artists brief was relatively open but demanded some kind of response to Leigh Woods where the work would be located. The Woods themselves are a National Trust nature reserve situated within walking distance of Bristol, but separated from the city by the imposing cliffs of the Avon Gorge. The resultant work ‘Autumn’ (2013) existed in two related forms - as object and as action. The object took the form of a tailored country-style suit printed with a camouflage pattern based on W. J. Mullers painting ‘Autumn’ (1833). As action it manifested itself as a series of walks beginning in Leigh Woods where Muller’s work was painted, stretching to Bristol Museum in the city centre, where the original painting now hangs. During the exhibition period the artist regularly walked this route across urban/rural thresholds wearing the camouflage suit. The whole project echoes something Tim Morton talks about in ‘Ecology Without Nature’ when he imagines an aesthetic practice that could link urban and rural perspectives. He stated that: “Romantic ecology seeks a place away from the enervating, phantasmagoric illusions of city life, as well as the industry, dirt, and noise. Might one do something perverse and combine the fantasy thing of Romantic ecology – the resonant idea of place – with the thinking generated by critical consumerism and its ultimate paragon, the urban stroller, the De Quincy, the Baudelaire? It should not be impossible in principle, since nature is already the quintessence of kitsch. But it appears so. It is as if there is a critical discourse of the country, and a critical discourse of the city, to match the other ways in which the country and the city have been kept apart in poetics and ideology”. (p. 169 Morton) This project then, asks whether a ‘sublime’ or ‘romantic’ experience necessarily precludes new ways of relating and responding to landscape.

The Enclosure of Eden: John Clare and the Politics of Place and Past

2016

Undeniably, the names alone of some of the most esteemed Romantic-era writers in the English language carry with them a remarkable weight of prestige. Until recently, the name of their contemporary, John Clare, drew few associations other than, perhaps, the image of a green and impoverished 'peasant poet.' Keats himself said of Clare's work, "images from Nature are too much introduced without being called for by a particular Sentiment" (qtd. in Barrell 129). We may assume that Keats' comment means to critique Clare's penchant for copious doses of seemingly superficial description that, in Keats's estimation, fail to illuminate an explicit feeling or idea. However, Clare's rigorous rendering of image is never superfluous and to conclude as much is to misread the essence of his work. Clare's representation of natural space is never just a poetic externalization of 'a particular sentiment,' but rather a firsthand, experiential and concrete representation of a location definite and actual rather than imagined. The intimacy he holds with his rural home of Helpston as conveyed through his work was genuine, and remained consistent until England's Enclosure Acts reached Clare's sequestered village and rent him from the land and lifestyle he so cherished. At its core, nature is an idea that is ever-shifting and always under the influence of individual perspective. The work of John Clare is perhaps the quintessence of local representation that exemplifies a natural world molded chiefly by the optics of subjectivity. Myopic, however, he is not. The eye of this rusticated poet is one that never averts. For Clare, more so than the other Romantics, nature transcends 'idea' and makes its landing in image, it turns from concept to concrete, from abstract to actual. Clare was no bard, nor did he claim to be. And as such, the Muses were not sought after in nature because, for Clare, his patch of nature Labriola 3 was itself a muse. The predominately Romantic conception of 'Nature' presents an outlook complex and varied, but almost always promises to infuse a rendering of the natural world with a grappling of the enigmatic or sublime. Clare's nature is a different model entirely. Rather than calling forth the unfathomable or ineffable, Clare's countryside remained grounded for him as a place of organic, unmitigated knowledge. From landmarks that bordered Helpston on every point on the compass, to the most minute of the village's local flora and fauna, Clare's landscape epitomized an exhaustive understanding of his nature in the purest sense and, as such, his poetry caters to a conveyance of immersion rather than immensity, to substance rather than sublimity. The countryside for our rural poet is not a colossal object; there is no Mont Blanc to be contemplated in his Northamptonshire territory, nor does he stand above Tintern Abbey in silent meditation. Rather, Clare's vision of nature is within rather than without, always holistic and comprehensive. With it, the rusticated poet reveals a certain keenness of eye that is at once wonderfully distracted yet always discerning, never distanced, but instead working toward distillation. Clare's honed sight toggles effortlessly between eye-level angles that capture his environment's finest parts to all-embracing, seemingly aerial views that encapsulate the entire scene and the sentiments percolating just below its surface. Always nimbly constructed, Clare's loco-descriptive verse presents place without hierarchy and instead evaluates each aspect of the landscape, from the minutiae to the majestic, as equally vital to the whole. To read Clare's work is to be enlightened by all he extracts from his location and to share in an ecological intimacy that he alone seems to have the power of orchestrating. Nevertheless, as we will discover, it is this same environmental sensitivity and perceptional immediacy that locks his depiction of place in oscillation between a poetry that offers immersive involvement and ecological advocacy and that which adheres to pastoral conventions of nostalgia. Clare cannot help but indulge in a

THE SEEDS OF ECOCRITICISM: A STUDY IN THE POETRY OF JOHN CLARE

Thesis, 2022

Nowadays, the worldwide issue of the environment occupies the minds not only of ecological experts and politicians but also is addressed in cultural fields and literature in particular. The conceptualization of ecocriticism, whether in the ecological field or cultural studies, has come as a response to the increasing public awareness of numerous environmental crises. Most ecocritics regard John Clare (1793-1864) as a 'proto-ecological' British poet since his poetry incorporates ecological issues which were not then categorized as they are now. The study offers a precise illustration of ecocriticism coupled with a number of the most significant ecological concepts proven in selected poems by John Clare. The ecocritical reading of Clare's poetry rests principally on the leading ecological theorist, Greg Garrard. The study attempts to apply the most significant ecological concepts (like 'pastoral,' 'wilderness,' 'apocalypse,' 'dwelling,' 'animals' and 'earth') that were introduced in his seminal book Ecocriticism: (2004). Additionally, John Coletta's ecocritical theorization guides the theoretical ground of this study through concepts like 'old-growth,' 'anthropomorphic,' 'canopy,' 'interdependence,' 'decomposition,' 'territoriality,' 'Human Competition,' 'stratification,' and 'commensalism.' The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate that human culture has a tight relationship with the physical environment and that all forms of life on Earth are intrinsically interconnected. It also intends to broaden the concept of "the world" to include the entire ecosphere. The outcome of the study emphasizes justifiably that John Clare's poetry planted the seeds of ecocriticism. Most importantly, his poetic vision is not limited to the interests of Romantics, as he is frequently associated with. By applying the theory of ecocriticism to selected poems written by the poet, the study comes to the conclusion that Clare can be regarded as a precursor of ecopoetical poetry in English literature. Clare's poetry is considered the starting point of ecopoetry in Western civilization as well. Finally, the study ends with a conclusion that is followed by a list of references consulted and the Arabic version of the abstract and the title page. Key words: ecocriticism, Clare.

Depiction of Ecological Awareness in British Romanticism

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

Literary criticism that examines the ways in which Romantic writers and thinkers participated in and responded to the history of ecological science, environmental ethics, and environmentalist activism is known as "Romantic ecology" or "green Romanticism". Ecocritical practice is generally motivated by a sense of political urgency associated with the desire to investigate and remedy current environmental problems such as threats associated with anthropogenic pollution, deforestation, species extinction, and climate change. We witness some of the first instances of a developing awareness of nature's ecological fragility, and the need for humans to reconsider their environmental practices, even prior to the British Romantic period. In the late seventeenth century, for example, the naturalist John Evelyn warned the Royal Society that English deforestation had reached epidemical proportions; in his book 'Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees' (1664), he advocated the creation of laws designed to ensure "the preservation of our Woods" (2. p. 108). However, it was during the Romantic era, which witnessed a sharp rise in urban populations and an increasingly industrialized economy, that environmental problems became much more severe and noticeable, taking on a new sense of urgency. Despite his modern reputation as nature's Romantic adversary, even William Blake complained about the "cities turrets & towers & domes / Whose smoke destroyd the pleasant gardens & whose running Kennels / Chokd the bright rivers" (1. p. 167 lines-9). Percy Bysshe Shelley lamented both the contaminated water and "the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities," which he insightfully attributed to urban "filth" and "the exhalations of chemical processes" (5. p. 133). Hargrove resists the common notion that our modern-day preservationist practices stem directly from the development of ecological science in the Victorian period, arguing instead that their historical roots are properly located in eighteenth-century aesthetic theory and practice. Thus, he proposes that "our present wildlife protection attitudes would have developed even if ecology and evolution had not become part of biological science" (3. p.153). According to Hargrove, the contemporary fascination for "picturesque beauty" contributed in important ways to the development of attitudes favorable to wildlife protection. (3. p.160) In Ann Radcliffe's gothic novel 'The Mysteries of Udolpho' (1794) Emily St. Aubert's ardent love of nature's sublimity and beauty is of a piece with her desire to preserve and protect the noble stands of trees that adorn her father's estate (7. p. 13). Some historians suggest that the kind of aesthetic sensibility Radcliffe attributes to Udolpho's heroine helped, in its wider social manifestation, to encourage the legislative institutionalization of preservationist practices. This aspect of Romanticism's ecological legacy, though to some extent admirable, merits critical scrutiny, for by fetishizing wilderness, the "Romantic Sublime"-a crucial component of picturesque aesthetics-tended to devalue or ignore non-spectacular landscapes like boreal forests and wetlands, the protection of which, as we now know, is vitally important to the Earth's ecological health. By advocating the protection of wilderness in distant parklands, people could feel more comfortable about exploiting, destroying, or disregarding urban and suburban ecosystems as well. Simultaneously enabling and

John Clare, Nature, Tradition and Change

The Ronald Blythe Centenary Lecture, delivered at the John Clare Festival in Helpston, 16 July 2022, examines the idea of tradition and by looking at a range of John Clare’s poetry, considers the question of how Clare understood and responded to tradition. Clare is seen in this reading as a writer who both embraces tradition, and welcomes change, surprise and the unexpected. In this I compare him to the great living writer whom the lecture is named for, Ronald Blythe, whose love of the past never prevents him from being open to the new and the surprising, (This is also being published in two parts in the John Clare Society Newsletter, 147 (February 2023), 4-10, and 148 (June 2023.)

Stephen in Nature: An Eco-Critical Analysis of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"When Stephen Daedalus interacts with nature in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, “his soul [i]s loosed of her miseries” (169). This reaction is quite profound, for it teaches the reader that nature can be a positive, nurturing presence. In this essay the terms “nature,” “physical world,” “natural world,” “environment,” “physical environment,” and “natural environment” indicate the so-called green world of Earth without intrinsically including the animal world. Taking a glance at Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man through the lens of eco-criticism, the reader can come to internalize a new model for environmental ethics as proposed by Stephen’s contact with nature and how it affects him. In this essay I will examine Stephen’s relationship with nature as it changes over time, and from there, I will launch into an extrapolation of the proposed environmental ethic. Ultimately, Stephen’s interactions with nature in liminal places such as playgrounds, windows, beaches, and gardens suggest a model for relating to nature in which the natural world is respected as an entity and engaged with earnestly. "

A language that is ever green: The Ecological Vision of John Clare

University of Toronto Quarterly, 1992

John Clare described himself on the title page of his first collection of poems as a 'Northamptonshire Peasant', a bold assertion of regional identity that situated his voice in an East Midland county that was becoming increasingly a zone of ecological conflict, marked by unequal struggle between the advocates of parliamentary enclosure and the forlorn adherents of the older, sustainable methods of open-field agriculture. The arguments advanced in favour of parliamentary enclosure during the early nineteenth century will sound familiar to late twentieth-century readers still subjected to the insidious rhetoric of Progress: it was claimed that the enclosure of common fields and 'waste' land would rationalize the existing patchwork of land-ownership and enhance the productivity of agriculture by providing an incentive for individual farmers to exploit their newly consolidated plots with maximum efficiency. Swamps and marshes would be drained, streams would be rechannelled, forests and scrublands would be cleared, and subsistence farming in general would give way to capital-intensive agriculture.

Landscapes, Animals and Human Beings: Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetry and Ecocentrism

Elizabeth Bishop's poetry is characterized by a deep gaze at the landscapes, containing animals and human beings -i.e. the vivid actuality of the earth as a biosphere, rather than anthropocentric absorption in idealism, logos or ideologies of human society. Although deviating from contemporary confessional poets, Bishop might be ranked among American nature writers due to her attachment to nature. Symptomatic of modern American nature writings, Bishop foregrounds nature; in Bishop's poetry nature is not an ornamental background upon which human dramas are played. Detailed facts of a natural scene or animals themselves often constitute the main texture of Bishop's poems, while human wills become insignificant. Critics describe these qualities of Bishop as reticence, impersonality or painters' craft. In this essay I seek to relate these characteristics of Bishop to an ecocentric worldview in terms of deep ecology. An ecocentric vision is seen in Bishop's poetry, in which other creatures register autonomy, while man is a mere component rather than dominant protagonist of the landscapes. Bishop's poetics illustrates an interactive egalitarianism, rather than sterile, hierarchical relationship between man and nature. Instead of the alienation resulting from authoritarian imposition of anthropocentrism, a reciprocal relationship between man and nature is brought about by Bishop's selfless stance of mutual esteem. Thus, in Bishop's scenes, there is a higher harmony, in which human consciousness ceases trying to give order to but surrenders itself to nature. Bishop's poetry evokes the reader's innocent, wholesome kinship to the land and other creatures of the earth, although the inherent link between man and nature may not be retrieved.