Landscape, Liberty and Authority

TRAMA

Tim Fulford examines landscape description in the writings of Thomson, Cowper, Johnson, Gilpin, Repton, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others. He shows how landscape description formed part of a larger debate over the nature of liberty and authority in a Britain developing its sense of nationhood, and reveals the tensions that arose as writers sought to define their relationship to the public sphere. Fulford's innovative study offers a new view of literary and political influence linking the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

NOTE EDITORE

Eighteenth-century landscape description formed part of a larger debate over the nature of liberty and authority which was vital to a Britain newly defining its nationhood in a period of growing imperial power and rapid economic change. Tim Fulford examines landscape description in the writings of Thomson, Cowper, Johnson, Gilpin, Repton, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others, revealing tensions that arose as writers struggled for authority over the public sphere and sought to redefine the nature of that authority. In his investigation of poetry and political and aesthetic writing, Dr Fulford throws light on the legacy of Commonwealth and Country-party ideas of liberty. Also discussed are the significance of the Miltonic sublime, the politics of the picturesque and the post-colonial encounter of the Scottish tour. Dr Fulford goes on to show how the early radicalism and later conservatism of Wordsworth and Coleridge were shaped, in part, by eighteenth-century literary political and literary authorities. His study offers an understanding of literary and political influence that cuts across conventional periodization, finding new links between the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

SOMMARIO

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Thomson and Cowper: the 'stubborn country tam'd'?; 2. Johnson: the usurpations of virility; 3. Unreliable authorities? Squires, tourists and the picturesque; 4. Wordsworth: the politics of landscape; 5. Coleridge: fields of liberty; Index.

PREFAZIONE

Dr Fulford examines landscape description in the writings of Thomson, Cowper, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others, showing how such descriptions formed part of a larger debate about liberty and authority, and offering connections between eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature and politics.

ALTRE INFORMAZIONI

• Condizione: Nuovo
• ISBN: 9780521027427
• Collana: Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought
• Dimensioni: 228 x 19 x 152 mm Ø 414 gr
• Formato: Brossura
• Pagine Arabe: 272