Literary Englands: Versions of 'Englishness' in Modern Writing

ISBN-13: 9780521443388 / Angielski / Twarda / 1993 / 300 str.

David Gervais (University of Reading)

Opis

In our time Englishness has become a theme for speculation rather than dogma; twentieth-century writers have found it an elusive and ambivalent concept, a cue for nostalgia or for a sense of exile and loss. Literary Englands meditates on modern meanings of Englishness and explores some of the ways in which a sense of nationality has informed and shaped the work of a range of writers including Edward Thomas, Forster and Lawrence, Leavis and George Sturt, Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Betjeman, Larkin and Geoffrey Hill.

Recenzje

"Gervais as a critic is often both sensible and acute." John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement

Spis treści

Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; 1. The nineteenth century: pastoral versions of England; 2. Edward Thomas: an England of 'holes and corners'; 3. Forster and Lawrence: exiles in the homeland; 4. Late witness: George Sturt and village England; 5. Contending Englands: F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot; 6. Englands within England: Waugh and Orwell; 7. Larkin, Betjeman and the aftermath of 'England'; 8. Geoffrey Hill and the 'floating of nostalgia'; Afterword: a homemade past; Index.