Green unpleasant land : creative responses to rural Britain's colonial connections / Corinne Fowler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fowler, Corinne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Country life in literature.

Imperialism in literature.

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Pastoral literature, English--History and criticism.

Pastoral literature, English.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

324 pages ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Green unpleasant land : creative responses to rural England's colonial connections

Place of Publication:

Leeds, England : Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2020.

Summary:

"Green Unpleasant Land explores the countryside's repressed colonial past and demonstrates its importance as a source of ideas about Englishness. The book presents historical evidence to show that rural England was a place of conflict and global expansion. It also examines four centuries of literary response to explore how race, class and gender have both created and deconstructed England's pastoral mythologies. In particular, the book argues that Black and British Asian writers have challenged narrow, nostalgic views of rural England but also expressed attachment to English landscapes and the natural world. The book questions the countryside's reputation as a retreat from urban life. It interrogates the idea that country houses are models for civilised living or that moorlands are places of freedom. It presents new perspectives on the "English" flora and fauna that feature in literature, parks, allotments and suburban gardens. The book reconsiders a range of rural locations through the lens of British colonial involvement, including East India Company activity and the slavery business. The book connects England's outward-reaching histories to what was happening in the countryside: the enclosure of common land, the beginnings of industrial mass farming and the reshaping of landownership through imperial profits. In bringing together histories usually separated by the Atlantic, Green Unpleasant Land makes connections, for instance, between the rebellion of enslaved people for their freedom in Jamaica in 1831, and the struggles of English agricultural workers in the Captain Swing uprising of the same year. But Green Unpleasant Land is more than an academic study--accessibly written as it is--because it contains a section of Corinne Fowler's own stories and poems written in response to the research she has undertaken and the material objects she has encountered. It is a personal story, too, of her own family relationship to transatlantic enslavement. Green Unpleasant Land should make uncomfortable reading for anyone who wants to uphold nostalgic views of rural England. The heatedness of the recent media response to such work shows just what is at stake: a selective vision of nation that underplays the impact of four colonial centuries, or a vision that embraces, as Paul Gilroy expresses it, a post-imperial 'convivial culture'."

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: pt. One EMPIRE, LITERATURE AND RURAL ENGLAND

ch. 1 Nation at the Crossroads

ch. 2 Green Unpleasant Land

ch. 3 Pastoral

ch. 4 Country Houses

ch. 5 Moorlands

ch. 6 Plants, Gardens and Empire

pt. Two CREATIVE RESPONSES: THE COLONIAL COUNTRYSIDE

Fields Strawberries

Gardens Azaleas

Graveyards Myrtilla

Hills Cotswolds

Maypoles Green and Pleasant Land

Moorlands Heathcliff

Parks Kings Heath Park

Pastoral A New Chronology

Pubs Public Houses of Britain

Seeds William Blathwayt of Dyrham Park

Woodlands An Escaped Slave from Yorkshire, 1789.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-306) and index.

ISBN:

1845234820

9781845234829

OCLC:

1148612790

Publisher Number:

99989105362