Back to the Land Again: Environmentalism in English georgic life writing 1940-2023

This thesis is in two parts: a creative piece composed of four linked essays, entitled Red Earth, followed by a critical essay entitled Back to the Land Again: Environmentalism in English georgic life writing 1940-2023. The creative work is life writing based on my experience of living and working on a market garden, intertwined with nature writing, history, biography and other types of creative non-fiction. The critical essay examines the work of six georgic life writers whose work, the thesis argues, both reflects and helps create three distinct waves of counter-cultural environmentalism as it relates to land and farming in England during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Taken together, the creative work and the critical essay explore the role of the past in framing current environmental discourse. The thesis argues that contemporary georgic life-writing can be strengthened by an awareness of genealogical roots in the same way that counter-cultural georgic life writers use the past, mediated through a radical nostalgia, to ground their visions of sustainable futures.<p></p>

Author dc:creator

• Mandy Goddard (21039560)

• Georgic
• Lifewriting
• Farming
• Organicism
• Self-sufficiency
• Regenerative agriculture

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved
• Open Access after 2027-07-14

Identifier

10779/exe.31069546.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/31069546