Writing the Poetry of Place in Britain, 1700-1807 - Self in Landscape

This book discusses the intrusion of personal voice in British landscape poetry of the eighteenth century. It argues that strong conventions, such as those marking topographical verse of the period, invite original poets to overstep those bounds, providing cover for explorations into memory, personhood, and the workings of consciousness.

List of contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Pervious Landscapes: Pope, Wordsworth, Cowper
Chapter One The Weather Underground: Pope in "Ode on Solitude"
Chapter Two Bearing It Away: "The Solitary Reaper"
Chapter Three "What Can It Signify?": Finding the Subject in "On the Ice-Islands Floating in the Germanic Ocean"
II. Landscapes of Loss: Duck, Goldsmith, Crabbe
Chapter Four "Lost, drown'd": The Problem of the Imagination in "The Thresher's Labour"
Chapter Five Road to Nowhere: The Poetics of Absence in "The Deserted Village"
Chapter Six Lost Cause: The Village and the Place of the Manners Tribute
III. Vanishings: Thomson, Gray, Smith
Chapter Seven "Conning Nature's Book": Body, Soul, Self, and Poetic Vision in The Seasons
Chapter Eight Vanishing Point: Gray in the Eton Ode
Chapter Nine "Bearing the Cor’se to Land": Beachy Head
Epilogue
Works Cited

About the author

Elizabeth R. Napier is Professor Emerita in the Department of English, Middlebury College. She has published on, among other subjects, eighteenth-century English Gothic fiction, problems of embodiment in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English fiction, and narrative strategies in the work of Daniel Defoe.

Summary

This book discusses the intrusion of personal voice in British landscape poetry of the eighteenth century. It argues that strong conventions, such as those marking topographical verse of the period, invite original poets to overstep those bounds, providing cover for explorations into memory, personhood, and the workings of consciousness.

Product details

• Authors: Elizabeth R. Napier, Napier Elizabeth R.
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.10.2022
• EAN: 9781032188171
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3218817-1
• No. of pages: 202
• Series: Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Nature, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 18th Century, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Literary studies: poetry and poets