Literary Englands: Versions of 'Englishness' in Modern Writing

by David Gervais

Overview

In our time Englishness has become a theme for speculation rather than dogma; twentieth-century writers have found it an elusive and ambivalent concept, a cue for nostalgia or for a sense of exile and loss. Literary Englands meditates on modern meanings of Englishness and explores some of the ways in which a sense of nationality has informed and shaped the work of a range of writers including Edward Thomas, Forster and Lawrence, Leavis and George Sturt, Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Betjeman, Larkin and Geoffrey Hill.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521443388
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/21/1993
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.91(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; 1. The nineteenth century: pastoral versions of England; 2. Edward Thomas: an England of 'holes and corners'; 3. Forster and Lawrence: exiles in the homeland; 4. Late witness: George Sturt and village England; 5. Contending Englands: F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot; 6. Englands within England: Waugh and Orwell; 7. Larkin, Betjeman and the aftermath of 'England'; 8. Geoffrey Hill and the 'floating of nostalgia'; Afterword: a homemade past; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...a wide-ranging discussion of what constitutes 'literary Englands' or 'literary Englishness' in the works of a group of important British authors....readable and lucidly presented....Highly recommended." Choice

"Gervais as a critic is often both sensible and acute." John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher