Progressing Backwards”

Rural Outsider Figures in Richard Jefferies, W.H. Hudson and Edward Thomas

Bibliographic Data

ID8862152
AuthorsLuke Lewin Davies (0000-0002-6455-3101, Department of English Literature, Tübingen University, Tübingen, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume103
Issue2
Pages202-226
Publication date2021-11-18
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0013838x.2021.1997475
OpenAlexW3213167526
LanguageEN
References cited22

This paper explores representations of rural outsider figures in Richard Jefferies, W.H. Hudson and Edward Thomas. It begins by suggesting that there has been limited recognition of these authors before moving on to explore Raymond Williams’ critique of various ways of representing the countryside that can be found in their writing: including the fetishisation of the past and the creation of an overly simplistic binary between country and city. Against this it is proposed that Williams’ objection to texts that falsely idealise rural life may be seen to reflect a progress-oriented ideological bias, which in the context of the present environmental crisis might be viewed as problematic. This paper subsequently returns to these three authors in order to determine whether their representations of rural outsider figures can be seen to offer an indirect critique of the left’s adoption of the capitalistic fantasy of progress, or whether they should indeed be viewed as a reactionary defence of a largely imaginary idealised past

Art · Context (archaeology · Economics · Fantasy · Ideology · Literature · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reactionary · Sociology · The Imaginary · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Psychology · Travel Writing and Literature · History · Law

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