John Clare Society Journal 30 2011

The official Journal of the John Clare Society, published annually to reflect the interest in, and approaches to, the life and work of the poet John Clare.

The official Journal of the John Clare Society, published annually to reflect the interest in, and approaches to, the life and work of the poet John Clare. 2017.

The official Journal of the John Clare Society, published annually to reflect the interest in, and approaches to, the life and work of the poet John Clare.

Amorous Aesthetics traces the development of intellectual love from its first major expression in Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics, through its adoption and adaptation in eighteenth-century moral and natural philosophy, to its emergence as a Romantic tradition in the work of six major poets.

The official Journal of the John Clare Society, published annually to reflect the interest in, and approaches to, the life and work of the poet John Clare.

John Clare (1793-1864) is one of the most sensitive poetic observers of the natural world. Born into a rural labouring family, he felt connected to two communities: his native village and the Romantic and earlier poets who inspired him. The first part of this study of Clare and community shows how Clare absorbed and responded to his reading of a selection of poets including Chatterton, Bloomfield, Gray and Keats, revealing just how serious the process of self-education was to his development. The second part shows how he combined this reading with the oral folk-culture he was steeped in, to create an unrivalled poetic record of a rural culture during the period of enclosure, and the painful transition to the modern world. In his lifelong engagement with rural and literary life, Clare understood the limitations as well as the strengths in communities, the pleasures as well as the horrors of isolation.