John Clare and the imagination of the reader / Paul Chirico.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chirico, Paul, 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Clare, John, 1793-1864--Criticism and interpretation.

Clare, John.

Clare, John, 1793-1864.

Authors and readers.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xi, 222 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Summary:

John Clare (1793-1864) repeatedly described his poems as his `offspring' and anxiously imagined their reception in a cultural field over which he had limited control. This broad and original study of the full range of his work is the first to take seriously his repeated appeals to the judgement of future readers. Restoring the suppressed history of Clare's deep cultural engagement, it teases out, in clear terms, the often unexpected complexities of his varied writings. In a series of close readings it reveals Clare's sophisticated poetics, his careful analysis of the history and culture of his own place and of the highly charged forms of antiquity and superstition, and his uneasy adoption of mythologies of literary labour. His fascination with literary success and posthumous fame underlies peculiarly intense, mediated relationships with other marginalized writers: Keats, Yearsley, Bloomfield, Darley, Reynolds, Wordsworth. Offering challenging new insights into the publishing trade of the 1820s and 1830s, the mechanisms of canon formation and the processes of textual transmission in a culturally disadvantaged rural society, this engaging study shows how Clare's obsessive reading habits are inscribed (often through covert quotation) in texts which in turn work to prefigure the responses of his own imagined readers.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Whose Clare? 1

John Taylor and Clare's early reception 5

2 The Sociable Text 23

Obscurity and the natural anthology 26

Keats and the circles of literary production 34

3 The Natural Text and the Canon 50

`To the Memory of Bloomfield': natural metaphor 54

Popularity and the canon 61

`Old Poesy' and the afterlife of language 68

4 Time and Labour 78

The uses of obscurity 82

Rural ruins and the leisured labourer 89

Taste and antiquity: the limits of knowledge 96

5 Audience and Haunting 107

Haunted narratives: `The Fate of Amy' 110

Superstition and textual pluralism 119

Ghost stories and the haunted artefact 127

6 Imagination and Artifice 138

Compulsive composition and natural observation 143

Linguistic artifice and other lands 150

Disfigured landscapes 158

7 Conclusion: Clare's Muse 167

`To the Rural Muse' 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 206-215) and index.

ISBN:

0230517633

9780230517639

OCLC:

76961162

Online:

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