Pleasant Land Research Articles

On England’s Green and Pleasant Land: Matthew Paris’s Map of Britain as a Reflection of the Levant

In the mid-thirteenth century, the noted English Benedictine chronicler Matthew Paris produced a substantial corpus of regional maps. Especially famous is Paris’s Map of Britain, particularly the version preserved in British Library Cotton Claudius d. vi, known for its mimetic accuracy, artistic presentation, and striking level of detail. Another of Paris’s maps, however, a map of the eastern Mediterranean preserved on Oxford Corpus Christi MS 2*, though little studied, shares many of the features which made the Map of Britain so remarkable. Internal evidence strongly suggests that the Oxford Map and the Claudius Map of Britain derive from a common project which depicted England and the Holy Land as mirror images – a project which would have had profound meaning in the contemporary political context, serving to express horror at Jerusalem’s fall in 1244, articulate support for a new English-led crusade, and comment critically on King Henry III’s performative piety. The subsequent abandonment of the project is equally informative since it demonstrates that medieval maps, far from being formulaic expressions of set religious doctrine, could express political opinions so intensely topical that they could become outdated before they were even complete.

Domesticating Rewilding: Interpreting Rewilding in England's Green and Pleasant Land

There are many different forms and interpretations of rewilding: the concept and its practice vary from country to country, with distinct interpretations according to its geographical location. Despite the term rewilding having been present in the lexicon for three decades, the concept of rewilding in England has experienced a prolonged developmental stage. This paper argues that a unique form of English rewilding is now emerging, which is distinct from rewilding in other parts of the world. Compared to other locations rewilding in England operates at smaller spatial scales; its ambitions to increase biodiversity, restore ecosystem functioning and increase natural autonomy are somewhat curtailed; it involves higher levels of human intervention; and, perhaps most tellingly of all, it goes by another name – ‘wilding’, ‘wild’ or ‘wilder’ with little mention of the much-maligned prefix ‘re’. This conclusion has been developed following a comparative case study of two English ‘rewilding’ sites (the Avalon Marshes and Wild Ennerdale) involving 49 semi-structured interviews: twelve expert interviews and nineteen and eighteen stakeholder/practitioner interviews at the Avalon Mashes and Wild Ennerdale respectively.

“Jerusalem” Set to Music: A Selected Discography

Blake’s stanzas from the preface to Milton a Poem, better known as the hymn “Jerusalem,” are by far the most popular of his poems to have been set to music. While researching versions for a book on “Jerusalem,” I discovered references to some 406 audio recordings and scores (a total that I suspect may still be expanded upon). These date from 1908—when Henry Walford Davies published the first in England’s Pleasant Land, a set of three-part songs—to the reinterpretation of Hubert Parry’s hymn by Tokio Myers and Jazmin Sawyers for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Donald Fitch’s catalogue was published in 1990 and thus misses the vast majority of recordings that appeared following the introduction of the CD in the late 1980s; he also omits more or less completely popular music versions, which had already begun to appear in the postwar period.

The city and the country: Cardiff, England and the 2015 Rugby World Cup

ABSTRACT Major international sporting events have long been recognised for the role they play in city and/or nation branding. The 2015 Rugby World Cup, England 2015, was promoted as the world’s biggest sporting event of the year. In addition to the 12 stadiums in England staging matches, games also took place at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Cardiff is not located in England but is the capital city of neighbouring Wales, a place where rugby union is the national sport and England its biggest rival. This paper looks at the incorporation of a Welsh city in an event hosted by England where the VisitEngland promotional campaign was based upon images of ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. Drawing upon the work of the cultural theorist Raymond Williams, it considers some of the issues shaping tourism promotion and assesses the imagery and discourse relating to a city that sits outside the borders of the host nation of an event.

Distribution and utilization of homestead windbreak Fukugi (Garcinia subelliptica Merr.) trees: an ethnobotanical approach

BackgroundGarcinia subelliptica (Fukugi in Japanese) is an evergreen tropical tree, first identified in Batanes, the Philippines, which has been planted as a homestead windbreak and in coastal forests extensively on the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. This article focuses on the traditional uses and cultural values of Fukugi trees and provides ethnobotanical information for the conservation scheme of this important tree species.MethodsA combination of ecological and ethnobotanical approaches was applied in this study. Extensive field surveys were conducted to collect dimensions of relatively large trees, and in-depth interviews with the village leaders and knowledgeable persons were conducted to collect ethnobotanical data.ResultsFukugi trees have been primarily planted as homestead or farmland windbreaks. Timber was harvested during difficult times, for example, after WWII, and used for recreational purposes for children or farmers. The fruits were also eaten on some remote islands. Old-growth Fukugi trees are widely found in sacred sites, within cities, and as symbolic trees. The older generations respect Fukugi trees; however, the cultural significance valued by older generation seems to be lacking in the younger generation. We argue that Fukugi is a cultural keystone species in Okinawa, which underpins Ryukyu culture and has transformed islands into a pleasant land, a unique place, and shared identity for the community.ConclusionsFukugi windbreaks provide significant ecosystem services, such as biodiversity in the forest, reducing soil erosion, and spiritual and cultural values. A combination of biophysical environment, as well as tradition and custom, has played an essential role in tree species selection for windbreaks. The positive impacts that anthropogenic activities have had on the sustainability of woody species, namely, the active utilization of tree species, may have enabled the species to sustain. Strategies for protecting old-growth Fukugi trees, in addition to restoration of damaged trees, are needed to improve the sustainable management of Fukugi trees in Okinawa.

Towards Radical Coexistence in the City: Performing the bio-urban in Bonnie Ora Sherk’s The Farm and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Flow City

The current dark ecological context has prompted resurgence in debate about the concepts of hope, despair, responsibility and urbanism. Both Bonnie Ora Sherk's The Farm (San Francisco 1974-1980) and Mierle Laderman Ukeles' work at the New York Sanitation Department (1976-present), revision human/more-than-human relationships and interactions, conceiving of an urban community as made up a multiple species and people. Their work provides models for radical coexistence, breaking down reductive urban/nature and nature/culture binaries. Recontextualising these formative performance works in light of contemporary developments and an intersectional ecological analysis, I argue they act as key sites for addressing critical issues of urbanisation and ecology. We are living in the urban century as global patterns of urban migration mean that more than half the world's population now live in cities. Given this growth, cities represent vital landscapes for ecological thought. However, the longstanding ontological distinction between the city and the natural world has led to the growth of cities in ways that do not always support long-term human and non-human life, health and wellbeing. My concept, the bio-urban, invokes the ecological vibrancy of the city and considers humans (and nonhuman species) in urban habitats as active participants of ecology, from an ecomaterialism position. I utilise the bio-urban as a conceptual framework to draw together expanded practices of performance from Sherk and Ukeles, to challenge the false urban/nature dichotomy and replace the clichéd image of eco performance as a reverential walk through a ‘green and pleasant land'. Both artists take an intersectional approach to urban ecology, which nuances and informs the bio-urban. In ‘dark’ times of ecological uncertainty, performance can be a site to challenge destructive thinking, bringing to light invisible relationships, blindspots, imaginative utopias and alternative possibilities for what it means to coexist today.

Robert Frost and The Poetics of Loyalty

Robert Frost and The Poetics of Loyalty Sam Gee (bio) Compare two poetic fantasies of escape: Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Good-Bye" and Robert Frost's "Into My Own." Both poems imagine leaving the workaday world behind to get in touch with the heart of reality. Emerson says "Good-Bye, proud world! I'm going home," and retires to "A secret nook in a pleasant land / Whose groves the frolic fairies planned." Frost describes deep, dark woods that he wishes "stretched away unto the edge of doom," and the voice of his poem announces in a tone as confident as Emerson's that "I should not be withheld but that some day / Into their vastness I should steal away." Emerson's poem spurns the society from which he fled, saying goodbye to "Flattery's fawning face," "Grandeur with his wise grimace," "those who go, and those who come," and the "sophist schools and learned clan." Rising above all of the pettiness of his apparently venal civilization, Emerson finds his holy object: "For what are they all, in their high conceit, / When man in the bush with God may meet?" In "Into My Own," Frost also finds God, so to speak. But there is a marked difference in approach between Frost and Emerson. Frost does not find God, or truth, by rejecting the ties that bind. Rather, he imagines his loved ones "who should miss me here / … And long to know if still I held them dear" coming to find him in the woods. And when they do, the voice of the poem proclaims, "They would not find me changed from him they knew—/Only more sure of all I thought was true." Like Emerson, Frost fantasizes about escaping from mundane reality. But Frost's is a troubled conscience—he knows that there is a solitude that is selfishness. Frost loves the truth of the woods, [End Page 328] which is beyond the truth (and illusions) of the town. But he knows that he cannot stay there. He has no interest in meeting God if to stare in the face of divinity would alienate him from the responsibilities and loves of the everyday world. ________ Frost was a great admirer of Emerson—he called the Concord Sage's "Uriel" "the best Western poem yet" and recalled in a letter that "some twenty-two lines in 'Monadnoc'… meant almost more to me than anything else on the art of writing when I was a youngster." Many of Frost's poems bear the mark of engagement with Emerson, and the affinities between the two poets go well beyond their shared New England soil. And yet, in a lecture entitled "On Emerson," in which Frost most fully details his affection for Emerson, he also makes clear what he takes to be his forebear's key weaknesses. Chief among Frost's problems is that he is "not quite satisfied with the easy way Emerson takes disloyalty." He continues, "He didn't know or ignored his own Blackstone. It is one thing for the deserter and another for the deserted. Loyalty is that for the lack of which your gang will shoot you without benefit of trial by jury. And serves you right. Be as treacherous as you must be for your ideals, but don't expect to be kissed good-bye by the idol you go back on." This is fairly vitriolic language for Frost, which leaves the reader of "On Emerson" with a question—why is "disloyalty" such a concern for Frost? And just what does he mean by Emerson's "disloyalty"? The contrast between "Good-Bye" and "Into My Own," with which this essay opens, is instructive in this connection, but incomplete. To bring out further what Frost might have meant by Emerson's "disloyalty," I will examine another famous Emerson poem, "Give All to Love," together with remarks from two of Emerson's early essays, "Friendship" and "Circles." Through all of these writings, Emerson puts forward a worldview that prizes individual growth, experimentation, and spiritual striving above commitments to human love or social responsibilities. To understand Frost's objection to Emerson, I will [End Page 329] consider three of Frost's own...

Taking part in activities, an exploration of the role of discretionary travel in older people's wellbeing

IntroductionActivity theory, a construct from social gerontology, provides a framework to bridge the themes of ageing and transport, and thus enable new insights into the role of out-of-home mobility for wellbeing. The theory proposes that undertaking activities (classified as formal, informal and solitary) can generate wellbeing benefits for older people. Transport can be an important enabling mechanism for activity, but such engagement is at risk should access to a car be lost at a time of declining public transport provision in many communities in countries like the UK. MethodAnalysis of survey data collected by the ‘Grey and Pleasant Land?’ study of UK rural citizens aged sixty and above (N = 920), which explores activity participation for groups with and without car access. As well as descriptive analysis of the data, a series of binary logistic regression models facilitate exploration of relationships between mobility and activity, and then activity and wellbeing. ResultsThose with car access are up to three times more likely to participate in formal activity (OR 3.228; CI 1.656, 6.293). More surprisingly, there are higher levels of informal activity for those without car access (65% of this group engage in activity with friends’ weekly compared to only 51% of those with car access). The wellbeing measures proved less conclusive, although lack of weekly activity with friends and family slightly increases the probability of loneliness (OR 1.472; CI .877, 2.470). Age and health are seemingly more important factors. ConclusionsLinks are seen between formal activity and mobility, but less so for informal activity. In both instances, activities are relatively local; suggesting endeavours to improve mobility and activity will achieve optimum wellbeing and community cohesion benefits at a local level. Activity theory does appear to offer promise as a way of exploring these issues.

Welgelegen

Welgelegen

Segregation, Popular Culture, and the Southern Pastoral: The Spatial and Racial Politics of American Sheet Music, 1870–1900

Segregation, Popular Culture, and the Southern Pastoral:The Spatial and Racial Politics of American Sheet Music, 1870–1900 Colin L. Anderson (bio) During World War I, historian Frank L. Owsley and a group of young white women traveled by train from Chicago to Montgomery, Alabama, to visit friends in the army stationed at Camp Sheridan. Writing later about the trip, Owsley recalled that none of the women had ever been to the South, and that on leaving Chicago "they were looking forward to the journey through the 'Sunny South' with considerable excitement…. They expected to enter a pleasant land of white-columned mansions, green pastures, expansive cotton and tobacco fields where negroes sang spirituals all the day through." Instead, the landscape they saw was one more of "desolation" than idyllic beauty, and as the decidedly unimpressive scenery rolled by, Owsley noted, "the Sunny South of Romance had disappointed my friends."1 Owsley's anecdote testifies to the hegemonic force of the pastoral image of the South in the United States. So strong was this vision of the South—replete with blooming magnolias, verdant landscapes, white-columned mansions, and a happy African American labor force—that Owsley's companions believed it to be absolute truth. Although the appearance of the pastoral myth in southern literature dates to the founding of Virginia, it was not until the nineteenth century that the imagery reached the masses through popular culture. The southern pastoral then saturated nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century society, circulating in both the North and the South in magazine stories, popular novels, minstrel shows, [End Page 577] and sheet music. Through these popular productions, romantic images of the South became central to white Americans' understandings of regional identities and, crucially, race relations.2 As a racially inflected trope that has exerted a powerful grip on the American imaginary, the southern pastoral can tell us much about racial thought in the United States. Scholars across a range of disciplines have studied the southern pastoral in various cultural texts, primarily analyzing it as an escapist and nostalgic response to industrialization, urbanization, and racial demographic change in the late nineteenth century.3 However, this extensive literature has failed [End Page 578] to fully explore and uncover the southern pastoral's spatial imagery and meaning.4 This essay addresses this oversight in the scholarship by bringing space to the fore in its analysis. In doing so, it sheds light on the core spatial and racial logic of the southern pastoral and illuminates the deeply imbricated nature of space and race in post-bellum American society. In particular, this article makes three related arguments about the causes and meaning of what I call the southern pastoral's spatiality of containment. First, I argue that pastoral images of the "Sunny South" constituted a representational space that cast the containment and rootedness of the black body in space as the blueprint for white supremacy.5 Literary scholar Paul Outka offers the important insight that works featuring the southern pastoral reduced African Americans to components of the landscape.6 This article builds on Outka's insight to elaborate the larger spatial implications of this reduction to landscape. Examining pastoral images of the South in the lyrics and cover art of popular sheet music published between 1870 and 1900, this essay shows how, on an elemental level, the southern pastoral portrayed white social control as dependent on the immobilization of black bodies in space by depicting African Americans as part of the landscape, physically fixed within a harmonious racial society. This fixity is fundamental to the southern pastoral's spatial meaning and its resonance for white society. Critically, the spatial and racial ideas embedded in romantic images of the South emerged through, and in tandem with, representations of gender and sexuality. I trace this interlaced structure to show how certain notions of black femininity and black masculinity framed the southern pastoral's spatial politics. Second, I contend that the southern pastoral reflected white Americans' deep anxieties about black mobility in the postbellum period. While the southern pastoral circulated in popular culture before 1865 via minstrel [End Page 579] songs, the end of slavery in the Civil...

Scenario analysis of emissions structure under climate change in China

This study calculated the CO2 emissions due to fossil fuel consumption in China during 2000–2015 with consideration of the regional coal-, oil-, and gas-related variations. We used logarithmic mean Divisia index methods to establish the primary influencing factors of CO2 emissions, and we extended the UK National Ecosystem Assessment Scenarios to forecast future CO2 emissions related to fossil fuel use during 2020–2030. It was determined economic development is the main reason for increased CO2 emissions, and that energy intensity and energy structure decreased CO2 emissions. Finally, we considered six scenarios to predict the future development of coal, oil, and gas consumption in China. Six scenarios including Go with the Flow, Nature@work, Green and Pleasant Land, World Market, National Security and Local Stewardship, results show Green and Pleasant Land will induced coal and oil emission decrease and gas emission slightly increase. The results obtained based on analysis of CO2 emissions and identification of regional influencing factors could provide useful information for decision makers regarding the allocation of fossil fuel use.

Predictors of loneliness and different types of social isolation of rural-living older adults in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACTLoneliness and social isolation are recognised, conceptually distinct threats to health and wellbeing in older age but limited evidence is available on their predictors in rural populations. This study performed logistical regression modelling to explore the predictors of loneliness, isolation from one's family and isolation from one's community in 884 British rural-living older adults (57.9% female; mean age = 71.5, standard deviation = 8.1 years) within the Grey and Pleasant Land data-set. While 13 per cent of participants reported feeling lonely, 49 per cent reported isolation from their family and 9 per cent reported isolation from their community. Minimal cross-over between groups was observed. Widowhood, financial difficulties, area deprivation, and self-reported impairments in physical and mental health predicted loneliness. Greater financial difficulty gave lower odds of isolation from one's family, and higher levels of community engagement gave lower odds of isolation from the community. Ageing in place (longer residency) was the only common predictor for all three dependent variables. Initiatives aimed at tackling loneliness and social isolation in rural-living older people must recognise that the two concepts are distinct, affecting different population sub-groups with mostly different risk factor profiles. Future interventions and policies should clearly identify whether their target is loneliness or social isolation and tailor their interventions appropriately.

Ethnography beyond the country and the city: Understanding the symbolic terrain of rural spaces

The 2012 London Olympic Games opening ceremony presented onlookers with a carefully choreographed vision of the British countryside. There were sheep, hillocks, trees, hedgerows and even working rainclouds. It was familiar, homely and bucolic and, according to the artist Danny Boyle, was intended to represent a humorous ‘picture of ourselves as a nation’ (Boyle, cited in Magnay and Heath, 2012). Condensing like the water droplets from the fake rain clouds suspended overhead, a moment of British culture was coalescing on the grass and tarmac of the east London Olympic Park; a stadium that was constructed painstakingly and expensively on the sanitized remains of centuries-old industrial brownfield that still smelled of wet coal (O’Hagan, 2012) and resonated with the echoes of long-closed warehouses and works. In place of ‘derelict and weedy’ came ‘green and pleasant’ – animated, magnified and given vibrant life against the roars and camera flashes of the assembled crowds. Despite the contemporary significance of the digital, virtual and the post-industrial, this pastoral spectacle served a timely reminder of the enduring significance of the rural landscape to identity and culture. A throwback to a simpler period of history, perhaps – a time when communities appeared to be more stable, authentic and ‘real’, or a time when people lived in close proximity with the land and other animals. Of course, many have questioned whether the countryside has ever really been a ‘green and pleasant land’. But this is to miss the point. Rural myths are both real and imagined – a juxtaposition and a blending of the ‘somatic’ and the symbolic; the fleshy and the representational – and they are given life through praxis, the many and varied doings that constitute human life-worlds. This is where ethnography – turning a Janus face to both naturalistic social interaction and academic rigour – makes its unique contribution.

‘Green and pleasant land’?: Ben Wheatley's British cinema between romanticism and modernism

‘Green and pleasant land’?: Ben Wheatley's British cinema between romanticism and modernism

“Building the New Jerusalem in Canada’s Green and Pleasant Land”: The Social Gospel and the Roots of English-Language Academic Sociology in Canada, 1889-1921

According to the conventional account of the history of English-Canadian sociology, the discipline was established in the 1920s at McGill, followed by developments at Dalhousie, Toronto and elsewhere. I dispute this account by documenting the substantial institutional footprint of so-called “social gospel” sociology in Canada’s Protestant universities and religious colleges, 1889-1921: courses taught; faculty appointments made; programs established. Between 1889 and 1921, 28 men, many of them clerics, taught sociology for two years or more in one of Canada’s English-language universities or Protestant denominational colleges. By 1921, 11 institutions offered sociology courses, 7 institutions had made a dedicated faculty appointment in sociology, and 8 institutions offered a program in sociology. In most cases, their teaching reflected the political – but not theological – principles of the social gospel. I argue that these men are the true pioneers of Canadian sociology and that we should rewrite the first chapter of Canadian sociology to give them their due.

What accounts for ‘England's green and pleasant land’? A panel data analysis of mental health and land cover types in rural England

Exposure to green space is associated with a variety of positive health states. Research to date has focused primarily on ‘generic’ green space in urban areas, where green space is relatively scarce and where it is dominated by playing fields and parks. The current research adds to our understanding with an examination of relationships between different types of green space and mental health in rural areas in England (approximate rural population=4 million). The aggregate land cover classes of Land Cover Map 2007 were linked to rural residential areas (Lower-level Super Output Areas) and then linked to rural participants (n=2020) in the 18-year longitudinal British Household Panel Survey. Random effects regression of mental health (as measured by GHQ12 scores) against land cover enabled effects to be simultaneously estimated from both mean between-individual differences and from within-individual differences over time. The nine natural land cover classes (Broadleaved woodland; Coniferous woodland; Arable; Improved grassland; Semi-natural grassland; Mountain, heath and bog; Saltwater; Freshwater; Coastal) were not significantly associated with differences in mental health between individuals. However, significant relationships were observed between some types of land cover and within-individual change in mental health amongst individuals who relocated during the 18 annual waves of the panel. These findings indicate the presence of important health related ecosystem services from different land cover types that have not previously been investigated and which help more effective spatial planning and land use management.

Meeting the challenge of interdisciplinarity: lessons and issues from the Grey and Pleasant Land project on rural ageing

This article reflects on the experience of a large interdisciplinary research team that included geographers in a study of older people's participation in community life in areas of rural Britain. The mechanisms used for facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration around the development of a collective conceptual framework and associated methodologies for investigating aspects of rural community inclusion in later life are outlined. Lessons relevant to geography education learned about the benefits and “messy reality” of interdisciplinary working are highlighted.

Britain's (not very) green and pleasant land

The author focusses on the issue on why Britain is falling way behind its international neighbour when it comes to renewable energy development. The article also tackles the issue on why renewable energy sector is not delivering what is expected to attain sustainability. (1 pages)

Timothy Saunders, Charles Martindale, Ralph Pite, and Mathilde Skoie Romans and RomanticsRomans and Romantics. Edited by Timothy Saunders, Charles Martindale, Ralph Pite, and Mathilde Skoie. Classical Presences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+431.

<i>Timothy Saunders, Charles Martindale, Ralph Pite,</i> and <i>Mathilde Skoie</i> Romans and Romantics<i>Romans and Romantics</i>. Edited by Timothy Saunders, Charles Martindale, Ralph Pite, and Mathilde Skoie. Classical Presences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+431.

Vatnahverfi: A Green and Pleasant Land? Palaeoecological Reconstructions of Environmental and Land-use Change

Accounts describing the Vatnahverfi region of Greenland are almost always effusive in their praise for the rich and bountiful nature of the landscape. Whether it was the dense scrub and woodlands, or the freshwater lakes and fertile green pastures, this landscape—contrary to elsewhere in the Eastern Settlement—is frequently assumed to have been an excellent location for Norse pastoral farming. Nevertheless, these observations are merely anecdotal in nature and based on the perceptions of archaeologists, or others who have visited the region. This paper asks whether Vatnahverfi was really the green and pleasant land that the literature would suggest, while exploring the rationale behind settlement in this region. Pollen-analytical data and associated proxies are deployed here in an attempt to assess whether the pre-landnám landscape was an attractive location for settlement, and to investigate vegetation and land-use changes consequent upon settlement. Pollen analysis allows an assessment of the natural capital of the pre-landnám (initial settlement) environment, which suggests that the central valley of northwest Vatnahverfi supported substantial Betula-Salix scrub or low woodland prior to landnám. The presence of woodland at landnám indicates the availability of a key resource (for fuel, building materials, or as fodder for livestock), and a cluster of early landnám-era dates have been returned on pollen sequences from farms in the center of Vatnahverfi. Data from pollen influx and coprophilous fungal spores associated with grazing animals also point towards this landscape having been particularly suitable for pastoralism. Poaceae (grass) pollen influx values, for instance, are often double those of farms in the Qassiarsuk region, suggesting higher hay yields with the potential to support larger numbers of domesticates. Radiocarbon age-depth modelling of pollen sequences suggests that abandonment of farms in the region may have begun from the mid-13th century AD, culminating in the 14th century.