In our time ‘Englishness’ has become a theme for speculation rather than dogma: twentieth-century writers have found it an elusive and ambiguous concept, acue for nostalgia or for a sense of exile and loss. Literary Englands meditates on the contemporary meanings of ‘Englishness’ and explores some of the waysin 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. Through closeengagement with the language and thought of these writers David Gervais showsthe extent to which they have been influenced by the consciousness of workingwithin a long-established, complex and sophisticated literary tradition. In the process he elucidates a nostalgia which lies at the heart of our culture. INDICE: 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.
- ISBN: 978-0-521-06193-3
- Editorial: Cambridge University
- Encuadernacion: Rústica
- Páginas: 300
- Fecha Publicación: 15/05/2008
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés