The enchantment of place
Mary Butts, Wessex, and interwar neo-romanticism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12653228 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andy Radford (University of Glasgow, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 157-172 |
| Publication date | 2012-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | National Identities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1460-8944 • E-ISSN: 1469-9907 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14608944.2012.670213 |
| OpenAlex | W2070278779 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 16 |
This article offers an interdisciplinary view of the complex iconography of ‘Wessex-ness’ in the politically disruptive writing of Mary Butts (1890–1937). My argument locates Butts' theories of historically embedded selfhood in the context of interwar neo-romanticism led by the landscape painter, illustrator and designer Paul Nash's articles on the national disposition of contemporary pictorial expression. The neo-romantic enterprise sought to evoke and enshrine mystical unspoilt hinterlands in the furthest corners of the island nation; its ideals left a clear imprint on cultural artefacts and practices as various as travelogues, mass advertising publicity, urban planning and aerial archaeology. However Mary Butts' journalistic and fictional texts reveal a radically ambivalent attitude towards this cultural phenomenon. Indeed, her neo-romantic stress on safeguarding the ‘streams’ of ‘Wessex’ from external threat blurs into a partisan and divisive chauvinism that upholds an ethos of territorial as well as ethnic purity
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Chauvinism · Context (archaeology · Ethos · Literature · Political science · Politics · Romance · Romanticism · Sociology · History · Law · Scottish History and National Identity · Spatial and Cultural Studies · Travel Writing and Literature
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |