Traditional accounts of Romantic poetry have depicted John Clare as a peripheral figure, an original genius whose talents removed him from the mainstream. This volume helps to show that far from being brilliant yet isolated, Clare was deeply involved in the rich cultural life of both his village and the larger metropolis. Offering an account of Clare’s poems as they relate to the literary culture and burgeoning literary history of his day, Mina Gorji defines the context in which Clare’s work can best be understood: in relation to eighteenth-century traditions as they persisted and developed in the Romantic period.

This book investigates what it is that makes John Clare’s poetic vision so unique, and asks how we use Clare for contemporary ends. It explores much of the criticism that has appeared in response to his life and work, and asks hard questions about the modes and motivations of critics and editors. Clare is increasingly regarded as having been an environmentalist long before the word appeared; this book investigates whether this ‘green’ rush to place him as a radical proto-ecologist does any disservice to his complex positions in relation to social class, work, agriculture, poverty and women. This book attempts to unlock Clare’s own theorisations and practices of what we might now call an ‘ecological consciousness’, and works out how his ‘ecocentric’ mode might relate to that of other Romantic poets. Finally, this book asks how we might treat Clare as our contemporary while still being attentive to the peculiarities of his unique historical circumstances.

Publisher Description

"In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature. The birds are gone to bed; the cows are still, And sheep lie panting on each old mole hill, And underneath the willow's grey-green bough - Like toil a resting - lies the fallow plough - "Hares at Play"."--Publisher description.

John Clare, Politics and Poetry challenges the traditional portrait of 'poor John Clare', the helpless victim of personal and professional circumstance. Clare's career has been presented as a disaster of editorial heavy-handedness, condescension, a poor market, and conservative patronage. Yet Clare was not a passive victim. This study explores the sources of the 'poor Clare' tradition, and recovers Clare's agency, revealing a writer fully engaged in his own professional life and in the social and political questions of the day.

Clare's Lyric examines John Clare's lyric poems and their impact on the work of three twentieth-century poets—Arthur Symons, Edmund Blunden, and John Ashbery.