Rural scenes and national representation: Britain, 1815-1850

Abstract

This text explores the peculiar power of rural England to stand for conflicting ideas of Britain. Despite the nostalgic appeal of Constable's or Tennyson's rural scenes, they record the severe social and economic disturbances of the turbulent years after Waterloo. Artists and writers like Cobbett, Clare, Turner, Emily Bronte and George Eliot competed to claim the English countryside as ideological ground. No image of rural life produced consensus over the great questions: who should constitute the nation and how should they be represented? The book ponders how some images of rural life and land come to serve as national metaphors while others challenge their constructions of Englishness at the heart of the British Empire. Drawing on recent work in social history, nationalism and geography, as well as the visual and literary arts, the book recovers other possible and alternative readings of social ties embedded in the imagery of the land. It reflects on the power of rural images to transfer local loyalties to the national scene, first popularizing them, then institutionalizing them. By turning a critical gaze on these scenes, the text comments on the difference between art and ideology, and the problems and dangers of asserting any kind of national identity through imagery of the land.