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An imaginary England : nation, landscape and literature, 1840-1920
Roger Ebbatson ; edited by Ann Donahue
Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate Pub., 2005
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Book description
In this highly theorised and original book, Roger Ebbatson traces
the emergence of conceptions of England and Englishness from 1840 to 1920.
His study concentrates on poetry and fiction by authors such as Alfred Lord
Tennyson, Richard Jefferies, Thomas Hardy, Q, Rupert Brooke and D.H.
Lawrence, reading them as a body of work through which a series of concern
is the way literary landscapes serve as signs not only of identity but also
of difference. Ebbatson demonstrates how a sense of cultural
rootedness is contested during the period by the experiences of those on the
societal margins, whether sexual, national, social or racial, resulting in a
feeling of homelessness even in the most self-consciously 'English' texts.
In the face of gradual imperial and industrial decline, Ebbatson argues,
foreign and colonial cultures played a crucial role in transforming
Englishness from a stable body of values and experiences into a much more
ambiguous concept in continuous conflict with factors on the geographical or
psychological 'periphery'.
About the author
Roger Ebbatson is Visiting Professor at Loughborough
University, having previously taught at University College Worcester and
the University of Sokoto, Nigeria. He is the author of Lawrence
and the Nature Tradition (1980), The Evolutionary Self (1982)
and Hardy: Margin of the Unexpressed (1992).
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