Landscape and Literature 1830-1914: Nature, Text, Aura [Hardcover]

This study examines the vital centrality of 'readings' of nature in a variety of literary forms in the period 1830-1914. It is exploratory and original in approach, stressing the philosophical and cultural implications in a range of texts from Tennyson, Hardy, Jefferies and Thomas.Introduction: The Shifting Landscape PART I: TENNYSONIAN 1. 'The Sea-Fairies': The Sirens and the Administered Society 2. 'Impassioned Song': Arthur Hallam and Lyric Poetry 3. Locksley Hall: Progress and Destitution 4. 'The Northern Farmer': Language and Homeland 5. Charles Tennyson Turner: Lyricism and Modernity PART II: HARDY, JEFFERIES, RUSKIN 6. Far From the Madding Crowd: Swampy Decomposition and Female Individualism 7. 'In Front of the Landscape': Spectral Ressentiment 8. 'A Singer Asleep': Hardy's Envoi to Decadence 9. The Machine in the Wheatfield 10. Prophetic Landscapes: Hardy and Jefferies 11. The Springs of Wandel: Ruskin, Proust, Benjamin PART III: THE SOUTH COUNTRY 12. Traversing the South Country, 1850-1914 13. The Spiritual Geography of Edward Thomas Bibliography

This study is engaging and dense. & Landscape and Literature is a book which combines a deeply ingrained knowledge of English Landscapes in time  landscapes as transcoded by poets and novelists  with a profound conviction that philosophical reflections and theoretical insights cannot be excluded by a topological analysis of literary texts. (Francesco Marroni, RSV - Rivista di Studi Vittoriani, Vol. 20 (40), July, 2015)

''an intriguing book which opens up so many new ways of looking at the relation between literature and the landscape in this period'' Tennyson Research Bulletin

Roger Ebbatson will be a well-known name to many readers of this journal: his previous work has already played a significant role in recuperating Richard Jefferies as a writer worthy of serious critical and theoretical attention...The book is characterized by intelligent and often arresting juxl3ï