Abstract
The article explores the idealization of rural landscape and rural life in contemporary English popular culture, raising issues that are underemphasized in earlier accounts of the rural as a stabilizing element in the social and economic order. Rural imagery has an emotional resonance in the unconscious realm of phantasy: it offers secure access to and possession of a good object. In media accounts, the countryside provides a sequestered, sensuous place of healing, although recent countryside imagery is also concrete in emotional quality, with a disturbing intensity, suggestive of Kleinian accounts of paranoid splitting. The article points to social theories of late modernity, in which the pressures and disruptions of the current socio-economic order contribute to a generalized fragmentation of consciousness. The persecutory tone of some popular accounts of the countryside is one of the consequences of this, transforming the rural world into a damaged maternal body.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
