Landscape and Englishness (Picturing History) - Softcover

Matless, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1861890974 ISBN 13: 9781861890979

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2001

Synopsis

Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. David Matless argues that landscape has been the site where English visions of the past, present and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body. Landscape and Englishness is extensively illustrated and draws on a wide range of material - topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural polemic, photography, nature guides and novels. The author first examines the inter-war period, showing how a vision of Englishness and landscape as both modern and traditional, urban and rural, progressive and preservationist, took shape around debates over building in the countryside, the replanning of cities, and the cultures of leisure and citizenship. He concludes by tracing out the story of landscape and Englishness down to the present day, showing how the familiar terms of debate regarding landscape and heritage are a product of the immediate post-war era, and asking how current arguments over care for the environment or expressions of the nation resonate with earlier histories and geographies.

About this title

About the Author

David Matless is Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Nottingham. His books include Landscape and Englishness (revd edn 2016) and About England (2023), both published by Reaktion Books, as well as In the Nature of Landscape: Cultural Geography on the Norfolk Broads (2014).

Edition details

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1861890974
• ISBN 13: 9781861890979
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368