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SUMMARY:John Clare: The Nature of Writing - Hetty Saunders\, M.Phil studen
 t\, Wolfson College\, Cambridge
DTSTART:20150506T120000Z
DTEND:20150506T130000Z
UID:TALK58925@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Graham Allen
DESCRIPTION:My work considers the relations between text and nature in Joh
 n Clare’s Midsummer Cushion\, the last substantial work he produced in t
 he early 1830s before being committed for madness at High Beach hospital\,
  and then sent to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. The full text was ne
 ver published\, though a thoroughly-edited version titled The Rural Muse w
 as printed in 1835. A ‘midsummer cushion’ was\, Clare explained in the
  introduction to the manuscript\, was a ‘cottage custom\,’ a piece of 
 ‘greensward full of field flowers & place[d] as an ornament’. It was\,
  he suggested\, ‘a title that was not inapplicable to the contents of th
 e Volume’. I want to explore the relationship Clare created between this
  ‘ornament’ of the natural field (representative of the artificial and
  the wild\, collected and rooted) and the textual field of his poetry. In 
 particular I will look at Clare’s efforts in his prose and poetry to rep
 resent and analyse what he called ‘the pages of sweet natures book.’ C
 lare’s writing was acutely attentive to the natural environment it descr
 ibed\, particularly that of botanical nature\, and to the experience of wr
 iting\, reading\, coding and decoding the natural world as it was partaken
  of by the poet. In so doing\, he showed that the space of the page is a k
 ey location for mediation between man and nature\, a space central to the 
 formation of interpretative interactions. Through an examination of Clare
 ’s own experiences in ‘getting to know plants’ as nature lover\, gar
 dener\, and amateur naturalist\, and the conflict he found to exist betwee
 n wildness and cultivation\, I hope to discuss how these poems present suc
 h conflict in a complex interplay between language and nature on the page\
 , a space where writing about nature also concerns the nature of writing. 
LOCATION:Combination Room\, Wolfson College
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