http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1110692095

Forms of English history in literature, landscape, and architecture

Forms of English History in Literature, Landscape, and Architecture examines a range of literature, including early modern poetry, nineteenth century novels, architectural treatises, and Shakespearean comedy, and uses them to guide the reader around the ruins of ancient buildings and landscape, past its churches, cathedrals and country houses, through the fields of England's 'green and pleasant land' or down the more tangled paths of English history and its folk traditions. Each distinct journey and its end produce an education in the formation of Englishness as a durable national identity that gets beyond the denial or the acceptance of the notion of an authentic and timeless English character or origin. This book traces the formation of a complex varied cultural archive in England's architectural edifices, common views of its countryside, and the role of literature to integrate and interpret those forms in order to mediate the past and present.

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