Landscape, Liberty and Authority: Poetry, Criticism and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth

ISBN-13: 9780521554558 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 270 str.

Tim Fulford

Opis

Tim Fulford examines landscape description in the writings of Thomson, Cowper, Johnson, Gilpin, Repton, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others. He shows how landscape description formed part of a larger debate over the nature of liberty and authority in a Britain developing its sense of nationhood, and reveals the tensions that arose as writers sought to define their relationship to the public sphere. Fulford's innovative study offers a new view of literary and political influence linking the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Recenzje

'Fulford's book gives us reason to reconsider the history of the romantic landscape tradition; after Landscape, Liberty and Authority, readers of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century poetry will find the genealogy of the landscape tradition to be more engaged in political and historical processes, more nuanced, and more richly rewarding than before. Fulford's achievement here should be applauded, and his historically informed analysis should generate much further discussion about the relationship between landscape poetry, politics, and history in the near future.' Romantic Circles

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Thomson and Cowper: the 'stubborn country tam'd'?; 2. Johnson: the usurpations of virility; 3. Unreliable authorities? Squires, tourists and the picturesque; 4. Wordsworth: the politics of landscape; 5. Coleridge: fields of liberty; Index.