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Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

2011

John Clare and the Art of PoliticsJason N. GoldsmithButler University, jngoldsm@butler.edu

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Recommended CitationGoldsmith, Jason N., "John Clare and the Art of Politics" John Clare Society Journal / (2011): 34-45.Available at http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch_papers/857

John Clare and the Art of Poli tics f ason Goldsmith

I. Imagine, if you will, that you are a you11g student enrolled it1 a private university in the United States of America. Yours was an essentially conservative, middle-class t1pbringing. You are earnest and intellectually a1nbitious to a degree. Good grades can1c easily. You graduated 11ear tl1e top of your secondary scl1ool a11d so excelled in English that you inay harbour ambitions of beco1ning a writer yourself. What are you to mak:e of the follo,.ving three stanzas from John Clare's 'Don Juan'?

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Children are fond of sucking sugar candy & maids of sausages - larger the better Shopmen are fond of good sigars & brandy & I of blunt - & if you change the letter To C or Kit would be quite as handy & throw the next away - but I'm your debtor For modesty -yet wishing nought between tis I'd hawl close to a she as vttlcan did to venus

I really cant tell what this poem will be About - nor yet what trade I am to follow I thought to buy old wigs - but that will kill 1ne With cold starvation - as they're beaten hollO\.Y Long speeches in a fa1nine will not fill n1e & inadhouse traps still take ine by the collar So old wig bargains now must be forgotten The oil that dressed them fine has made them rotten

I wish old wigs were done with ere they're mouldy I wish- but heres the papers large & lusty With speeches that full fifty time they've told ye -Noble Lord Jol1n to sweet Miss Fanny Fusty Is wed-a lie good reader I ne'er sold ye -Prince Albert goes to Ger1nany & must he Leave the queen's sntiff box where all fools are strurmning From addled eggs no chickens can be coming1

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011e of the first things you migl1t notice is how little this confor111s to your experience of poetry - neither the rich, expressive vei11 of lyric worked by so n1any poets since Wordswortl1, nor the gli1nmering sl1ards of High-Modernist assemblages such as The Waste Land. Writte11 while Clare was incarcerated at the Higl1 Beech asylt1111, 'Don Jua11' is a fractious, allusive, topical, and decidedly promiscuous poe1n tl1at presents nmnerous problen1s in the classroon1.

There are what we rnight call its moral challenges. The vulgar sex1..lal pt1nni11g of 'Do11 Jt1an', its implicatio11s of genitalia and fellatio, a11d deep-seated misogyny form a hurdle for my rnai11ly conservative Midwestern stude11ts. In addition to these moral provocations, which test our sensibilities more than our co1nprehe11sion, 'Don Juai1' prese11ts nu1nerous cognitive challenges. What are we to malze of its obsession with const1mption? To what extent do we follow its vexing puns or its elastic 1netapl1ors? How readily do we sift and make sense of its abrupt shifts in to11e, register, a11d topic? For some, the poen1's tl1irty-four ottava­ri1na stanzas seem less a cohesive utterance than a 'circt1it for i11te11sities' .2 Finally, there are the practical challenges. A thicl<et of political reference and allt1sion, 'Don Juan' is exceedingly topical. For u11dergraduates with little k11owledge of tl1e mid 11ineteenth­century political landscape- of Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert; of Melbour11e, Wellii1gto11, a11d Peel, Whigs a11d Tories, a11d the election of 1841; of Corn Laws (1815) which kept the price of grains at artificially inflated levels; of the Reform Act (1832) whicl1 exte11ded the franchise and ren1apped political borot1ghs; of Enclost1re (1801) and the Poor Law Alnendinent Act (1834) which exacerbated tl1e st1fferings of inany agricultt1ral laborers - the poem can be extremely frustrating.

Yot1 will not be st1rprised, then, to 11ear that almost invariably students come to class piqued. They are thoroughly convinced that 'Don Jt1an' is a bad poem, that Clare is a bad poet, and, I suspect, that I am a bad person for having made them read it. Altl1ough the inte11sity of tl1eir response short-circt1its tl1e kil1d of critical analysis I hope to foster, it also offers me a way in. So that's where we start - why they are so put out by a poem. Quite sin1ply, they feel dt1ped. They lmow what a poem is supposed to look like, what it should sound lil<e, what it should feel lil<e as you turn it 011 your tongue. They know what a poem is supposed to do. 'Don Jt1an' fails to conforn1 to tl1eir notion of poetry. Ii1 other words, comparil1g it to the stoclz of literature - however rich or scant - they have

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bt1ilt llp over their years as readers, tl1ey 11ave formed some sort of opinion about its 1nerit as a poem. Althot1gh I don't fran1e ot1r disct1ssion in these ter1ns, tl1is initial foray suggests how 'Do11 Jt1an' ope11s the question of aesthetic valt1e, ge11eric 11or1ns, and reader expectations. By tl1e end of tl1e class period, I want the students to realize that this is exactly what Clare's poen1 is designed to do.

And that is what I want to suggest here as well. Briefly exploring son1e of the poe1n's elt1sive political references and overt Byronic re-in1agini11gs, I want to share how an eye to the poem's political vale11ccs ei1cot1rages t1s to reco11sider aesthetic valt1e and the 11istorical co11til1gency of such sensibilities.3

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Jason Goldsn1ith and his John Clare class, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A., Fall 2010.

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II. In the poe1n's thirtieth stanza Clare writes:

Lord Byron poh - the man wot rites the werses & is just what he is & nothing more Who with his pen lies like the mist disperses & makes all nothing as it was before (ll. 263-6)

Hold on to Byro11 for a inoment. I want to begin with the word 1nists, whiel1 li11ks the poem to the Enligl1tenme11t discourse on taste and tl1e humoral theory upon whicl1 it drew. That theory, as Denise Gigante has noted, held that ill-digested food could breed corrt1pt humors that would ascend directly to the brain from the sto1nach.4 These mists or vapot1rs wot1ld obstrt1ct the operations of mi11d until properly dispersed. Throughout the eigl1teenth century, debates about Taste applied this concept metaphorically to aesthetic sensibility. David Hume, for instance, posited that such mists could corrupt the faculties of the Man of Taste. We can, tl1ough, rid ourselves of the inists of hun1oral defect, Ht11ne believed, purging our way to clarity. Physical taste thus served as an analogue for the aesthetic discernment by which the Man of Taste was distinguished. Edmt1nd Burl<e, too, located aesthetic taste in the body but believed that these sensations cot1ld not be rooted out. The inost we ca11 do is hide our appetite, regulate our brute ai1d asocial desires. The goal of the Man of Taste, the11, was to transcend the material body, and over time the metaphorical connotations of taste quickly overshadowed its original bodily reference as Ht1me, Burl<e, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and others sought to refine unruly appetite into aestl1etic taste.

The embodied basis of aesthetic taste would, of course, have profound i1nplications for Burl<e's political worl< years later in light of the French revolution, where the 'swinish mt1ltitude' having st1ccumbed to their 'filthy Appetites' threaten the social order. As Gigante observes, 'Burk:e capitalized on the sha1neless appetite of the food-grubbing swine as a symbol for those who threatened tl1e aestheticized ideal of national commt1nity'.5 The inner struggle between physical appetite and social propriety enacted within the individt1al Man of Taste was projected into the social realm and fierce debates over national identity.

To help students grasp tl1is process, I provide tl1em with copies of several political prints. In French Liberty. British Slavery ( 1792), for example - in which an emaciated Frenchman celebrates his

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liberty while gnawing on leeks in co11trast to a rotu11d John Bt1ll who gru1nbles about higl1 taxes wl1ile setting to a sizable repast of 1neat and ale - const1n1ption functions as a process tlnough wl1icl1 national boundaries, or, social bodies, were delineated and debated. The patriotic design of Reform Advised, Begun, Compleat ( 1793 J

offers a si1nilarly ad1no11itory tale in which a well-fed John Bull -whose 'good constiti1tion' is both physiological a11d political - is duped and physically depleted by French refor1ners. 6

The iconography of co11sun1ption was utilized as well to co11test the social order in Britain. In Substitutes for Bread; - or - Right Honourables, Saving the Loaves etJ Dividing the Fishes (1795), government ministers feast on food inade of tax inoney while a crowd identifying itself as tl1e 'starving swine' petitions for relief. As such images suggest, I tell my students, starvatio11 was never far away for the multitude of Britain's laborers throt1ghout this period. In 1795, unusually cold weather devastated crops, doubled the deatl1 rate, and caused riots.7 We disci1ss as well how poor harvests in 1816-1818, in tl1e late 1820s, and again i11 tl1e late 1830s caused considerable distress and political unrest across the natio11. Early in tl1e century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote to Thomas Poole: 'The Farn1ers in tl1ese Northern Countries are getting rich. Their Crops last year were excellent; but the Country itself is starving'.8

So dire were the circt11nstances, observed Coleridge, tl1at England had become 'a place where the laborious Poor are dyi11g with Grass witl1[in] their Bellies!'9

As he recounts in his 'Journey out of Essex' ( 1841), Clare himself had been forced to such n1east1res, subsisting 011 grass dt1ri11g his brief escape fro1n the asylu1n in July 1841. And in 'Don Juan' 11e specifically invok:es the spectre of 1naterial deprivation borne by those barely able to clothe or feed themselves:

38

-I wish for poor 111en luck-an honest praxis Cheap food & cloathing-no corn laws or taxes

I wish-but there is little got bye wishing I wish that bread & great coats ne'er had risen I wish that there was some such word as 'pishun For rhyme sake for my verses must be dizen With dresses fine-as hooks with baits for fishing I wish all honest 1nen were out of prison I wish M.P's. would spin less yain - nor doubt But burn false bills & cross bad taxes out (ll. 47-56)

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Clare desires a11 ho11est praxis for his peers that stands against the yar11-spinni11g of M.P.s, wl1osc fiscal policies - 'corn laws' and 'taxes' - contribute to the abject condition of Britai11's workers struggling to acquire the bare necessities of life. As I have suggested elsewhere, 1° Clare decries the fiscal policies and false promises tl1at inflated prices for manttfacturers while exacerbating hardship for the laboring poor. More to the point, however, is the method by wluch tl1c poc1n artici1lates this concer11. Agail1 a11d again 'Do11 Juan' registers its political con1plaint against tl1c backdrop of the lived reality of hu11ger and want: 'Long speeches i11 a famine will not fill 1ne'. 11

III. In tracing this social history, I have treated n1ists as what Richard Stricr woi1ld call a 'mention'. That is, the n1cre mention of a word - mists - allows tl1e critic to consider so111e aspect of culture more ge11erally- the hardsl1ips faced by Britail1's laboring poor. We might also ask ourselves, though, how mists is 'used' within the poe1n, allowing the worl< itself to provide the initial context. 12 For wl1ile it is true that 'Don Juan' encourages us to look beyond the text to its political context, it also consistently calls attention to itself as a literary artifact, a deliberately sl1apcd work of art. 13 For il1stance i11 the thirtietl1 stanza:

Lord Byron poh - the man wot rites the werses & is just what he is & nothing more Who with his pen lies like the mist disperses & makes all nothing as it was before (11. 263-6)

Dismissing poetic identity as little more than style, these lines interrogate the very i1ati1rc of aestl1ctic prodi1ction. 14 Considering mist as a 'use' 11elps us recognize that the poe111's political critique is, at the sa1ne ti111e, a critique of ninetee11th-century aestl1etics.

That Clare was familiar with contemporary aesthetic debates is clear from his unpublished 'Essay 011 Landscape'. Denouncing the 'extravagances of false effects[ ... ] by which beat1tift1l effective co1npositions arc produced bt1t not paintings from Nature as tl1cy profess to be', Clare contends that for a painting to have any incrit, it inust den1onstrate a fidelity to the scene as it exists. 15 Sucl1 merit Clare locates in Peter DeWi11t, '[ t]he 011ly artist that produces real English scenery in which British landscapes are seen'. 16 DeWi11t's treatments of the broad, Lincolnshire landscape 1are the very copys

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of naturc'. 17 'There are no n1ountains lifti11g 1.lp tl1e very plains with their extravagant altitudes no old ruins with their worn & inossy claptrap for effect but sin1plc woods spreading their qt1ict draperys to the sum1ner slzy & undiversified plains baslz in the poetry of light & sunshinc'. 18 Such work c1ncrgcs necessarily out of intense, direct observatio11. For Nature, Clare observes, 'rewards the faitl1 of her worshippers by revealing such bcat1tys in her settings that the fanciful i1ever meet with - tho they imagine mountains & rivers & rocl<s & catcracts where they arc not' .19 Esse11tially Clare believed that we can experience the beauty of the natural world, its 'si1nplicity of 1nerit', only iI1 a direct, phenon1c11ological ei1countcr unmediated by pre-conceptions.20 In other words, we i1eed to lool< tl1rough our eyes rather than througl1 our own expectatio11s.

As Clare's terms indicate, the 'Essay' is a rejection of the generalizing tende11cies of picturesque conventions - its predilection for broken lines, rough edges, crumbling ruins, and jagged mountains. '[T]l1at peculiar kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture', the picttuesque reads the landscape through abstract principles culled from tl1e worlz of artists such as Claude Lorrai11e, Nicholas Poussin, and Salvator Rosa.21 '[C]hastened by the rules of art', the pictt1resque i1nagi11ation refines i1ature.22 Faced witl1 a pleasing prospect, for instance, '[w]e examine what would amend the composition: how little is wa11ting to reduce it to the rules of our art' .23 To identify something as pictt1resque, then, is already to experience it second­hand, to see it in ter111s of an artistic re-presentation: 'We i11ust ever recollect', Gilpin observed, 'that natt1rc is most defective i11 co1nposition; and must be a little assisted. Her ideas are too vast for picturesque use, withot1t the restraint of rulcs'.24

Wildly popular, Gilpin's worlz encouraged a inultitude to seelz ot1t tl1c 'artistic effect' iI1 nature- rather thai1 nature itself- opc11ing the landscape to visual consumption as leisured tourists chased after scenes and prospects t11at wot1ld confor1n to picturesque principles. If the vogue for the picturesque was a passing fad, Clare recognized its far-reaching effects. For the kinds of observation cncot1raged by picturesque pri11ciples cultivated habits of experience as '"'ell. They orga11ized ways not just of seeing but also of being in the world.

In contrast to the aesthetic detachment fostered by picturesque travel- 'tl1e provi11ce of the picturesque eye is to survey nature[ ... ] It throws its glances arotmd in the broad-cast stile. It comprehends an exte11sive tract at each sweep'- Clare cha1npioned a nlore partict1lar relationship to the natural world, a relationship based

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in close physical cnco1111tcr a11d intin1ate local knowledgc.25 What we might call an aesthetic of participation rather tl1a11 prospcct.26

'I love good fellowship & wit & punni11g', he writes in 'Don Juan':

I love 'true love' & God my taste defend I hate most damnably all sorts of cunni11g -I love the Moor & Marsh & Ponders end- (11. 146-8)

Against deception and false appearances, 'all sorts of cunning', Clare sets his 'taste' for tr11th, companionship, and the local natural world. The inoor & inarsh- a far cry fro1n pict11rcsq11c ino11ntains and n1ossy ruins - arc co1nplcmented by the named locale, Ponders End, which grounds Clare's experience in a particular, local context.

In a recent article, Simo11 Jarvis has suggested that 'tech11ique' is 'the way in which art thinks and the way in which the worl< of art most intimately registers historical experience'.27 This scc1ns especially relevant to 'Don J11an', a lewd and fractio11s dcn1111ciation of polite English society. By the 1840s, whe11 Clare was drafting the poem, middle-class consun1erism had begun to regulate a11d organize social relations, part of a civilizing process through which the Victorian nation came into being. Taste, discernment, and civility were established as moral imperatives, while appetite and its corollary, desire, were s11blin1ated, displacing inateriality fron1 p11blic space.

In contrast to tl1is trend, Clare cultivates a carnal aesthetic that challenges middle-class mores through its erotic imagery and promiscuous street-slang. Lil<e Byro11 before him, Clare recognized that truth was correlative with the body. In his own 'Don J11an', however, Clare forgoes Byron's s11btle punning for a more explicit profligacy: 'Prince Albert goes to Ger1na11y & in11st he / Leave the queens snuff box where all fools are strumming' (11. 87-8, emphasis added). Ide11tifying Quee11 Victoria's vagina as a luxury item strol<ed by all comers, Clare insists on the materiality of experience by way of tl1e crudely sexualized body. Here and elsewhere, Clare deterritorializes language, pushing meaning to the point of collapse so that it might 'vibrate witl1 a new intcnsity'.28 Frequently, Clare c11gagcs in a forn1 of p11nni11g whereby sense fract11res into a proliferation of potential meanings tl1at defor111 a11d i11for111 011e anotl1er, deliberately resistil1g closure: 'In bills of fare you'll fi11d a inany courses/ Yet all are innoscent as any inaid is/ Put these two dishes into one & dress it / & if there is a meaning - yo11 may

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guess it' (11. 21 1-14 J. At otl1er ti1nes he presses language beyond the realm of signification i11to its purely material expression: 'I wish that there was so1ne such word as 'pishun / For rhyme sal<:e' (11. 51-2). Openi11g the sig11ifying processes through which meanil1g is made, Clare illustrates how the aesthetic is complicit in the material deprivations borne by the poor.

I st1ggest to my students that this helps t1s better appreciate the Byronic oscillations we have encountered, for example in the seventh stanza, where the political lament is interrupted by self­reference:

I wish-but there is little got bye wishing I wish that bread & great coats ne'er had risen 1 wish that there was so111e such word as 'pishun For rhyme sake for my verses must be dizen With dresses fine-as hool<s with bait for fishing I wish all honest men were out of prison I wish M.P's. would spin less yarn - nor doubt But burn false bills & cross bad taxes out

(11. 49-56, emphasis added)

The i11terpcnetratio11 of style and politics in this stanza inight be said to stand for the poen1 itself, which conjoins a govermnent unresponsive to worl<ing-class needs witl1 the aesthetic sensibilities underwritil1g middle-class consumeris1n:29

I wish I had a quire of foolscap paper Hot pressed- &. crowpens- how I coud endite A silver candlestick &. green wax taper Lord bless me "vhat fine poems I would write (11. 279-82)

Satirizing the pt1blic taste for luxt1ry goods, Clare 11ere reduces the poe111 to a con1illodity prodt1ct, its quality determined by the 'fine' n1aterial fron1 wluch it is inade-'Hot pressed' 'foolscap paper', 'crow pens'. The political vector of this aesthetic economy is evident as well i11 Coleridge's letter to Thomas Poole qt1oted previously. 'The Cot1ntry is divided into two Classes', he co1nplai11s1 1011e rioting &. wallowing in the wantonness of wealtl1, tl1e other strt1ggli11g for tl1e necessaries of Life.-Tl1e Booksellers feel this­Longman told n1e "tl1at scarcely a11y1 but Book:s of expe11ce, sold well. Expensive Paper, & Ornaments &c were never layed out in vai11. For tl1e chief Buyers of Bool<s were tl1e Wealthy who bought tl1en1 for Fur11iture"1

•30

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Far fron1 family, friends, and the rcadi11g public that had once celebrated him, Clare adopts and extends tl1e Byronic persona for his own ei1ds.31 Tl1ough drafted ii1 the confi11es of the asylt11n and bearing the trace of Clare's ine11tal illness, 'Don Juan' is 11ot merely the prodt1ct of a inind turned il1 on itself. For in its progressive deterritorialization of language, Clare's poem enacts tl1e suture of the individt1al and the political characteristic of '1ninor' literatt1re, that is, a literature in wllich 'the political don1ain has contaminated every statement'.32 As Deleuze and Guattari observe, tl1e 'cra1nped space' of i11inor literature, 'forces each individt1al intrigt1e to co11nect im111ediately to politics. The individual concern tl1us beco1nes all the inore necessary, ii1dispensible1 1nagnified, because a whole other story is vibrati11g within it'.33 Nothing could be inore true of Clare's 'Don Jua11'.

To suggest, the11, that 'Do11 Jua11' is a worl< of minor literature is to see past its topical references, to ack11owledge its earthy co1nplexity, and to advocate its cutting i11sights ai1d co11tinued releva11ce. Offering stude11ts a lesson in 11ow aesthetic values co11tribute to tl1e for1nation of social bodies in modern consu1ner society, 'Don Juan' speal<:s to our own age of post-industrial capitalism, financial deregulatio11, and ever-expanding inarl<ets. It also just inight afford them a model for reading and resisting these global currents.

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NOTES

1 Lines 65-88. All subsequent references are by line nun1ber to Clare's 'Don Juan', Later Poen1s I, pp. 89-102.

2 Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Tovvards a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. 21-2. Willia1n Brewer observes that Clare's nature poetry lacks 'an organic unity that allows the reader to perceive an overall design': Willian1 D. Brewer, 'John Clare and Lord Byron', f CSf, 11 ( 1992), 44.

3 The nlost extensive elaboration of the poen1's political register appears in Sin1on Kovesi, 'Masculinity, Misogyny and the Marketplace: Clare's "Don Juan A Poem"', fohn Clare: Nevv Approaches, eds John Goodridge and Simon Kovesi (Helpston: John Clare Society, 2001), pp. 187-201. This strain is also traced, to a lesser degree, in Martin, who identifies 'Don Juan' as 'the place at which the repoliticizing strategics of writing occur': Philip W. Martin, 'Authorial Identity and the Critical Act: John Clare and Lord Byron', Questioning Ro1nanticism, ed. John Beer (Baltin1ore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 75. On Clare's politics 1nore broadly, see John Lucas, 'Clare's Politics', Haughton, pp. 148-77.

4 The summary that follows is indebted to Denise Gigante, Taste: A Literary History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). See especially the first chapter.

5 Gigante, Taste, p. 63. 6 Clare uses this p1u1 in 'Don Juan': '0 glorious constitution what a picking/

Ye've had fro111 yotrr tax harvest & yotu tythe' (ll. 239-40). 7 Gigante, Taste, p. 65. 8 The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 7 vols, ed. Earl Leslie

Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), vol. 2, p. 713. 9 Tb id., vol. 2, p. 710.

10 Jason N. Goldsn1ith, 'The Pro1niscuity of Print: John Clare's "Don Juan" and the Cul ture of Ro1nantic Celebrity', SEL 46.4 !Autu111n 2006), 803-32.

11 Line 77. See Martin, 'Authorial Identity and the Critical Act: John Clare and Lord Byron', pp. 88-9

12 Richard Strier, 'How formalism Beca1ne a Dirty Word, and Why We Can't Do Without It', Renaissance Literature and its Ponnal Engagements, ed. Mark David Ras1nussen (Basingstoke: Palgravc, 2002), p. 213.

13 Perhaps the first to recognize the aesthetic in1pulse in Clare's asylun1 verse was Arthur Syn1ons: 'Introduction', Poems by fohn Clare (London: Henry Frowde, 1908). On the relationship betv;een Clare and fin-de-siecle poetics see Stephanie I<uduk Weiner, '"The Aesthetes" Jolu1 Clare: Arthur Symons, Norman Gale and Avant-Garde Poetics', English Literature in TI:ansition, 51:3 (2008), 243-65.

14 On Clare's strategic use of the fonus of Byronisn1, sec Margaret Russett, 'Like "Wedding Gowns or Money fron1 the Mint": Clare's Borrowed Inheritance', Ro1na11tic Circles Praxis Series, March 1999, <http://wvtw. rc.tund.edu/praxis/law/russett/mruss.htm>, who observes that 'to win the "title" of poet is to become not Byron but "Byron"' !paragraph 9). Philip Martin provides a similarly insightful perspective. He observes that Clare's 'deliberate confusion of authors [ ... j raises questions about the point of textual origin' while sirnultancously interrogating 'how authorial identity is

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rendered or granted' (p. 72). As Martin suggests, 'texts engender authors, and not the other way around' (p. 88). In addition to those nlentioned here and above, Clare's relationship to Byron is explored in Anne Barton, 'John Clare reads Lord Byron', Ron1anticism, 2.2 (1996), 127-48; Brewer; Goldsmith; l\!lark Storey, The Poetry of John Clare: A Critical introduction (New York: St Martin's Press, 1974); and Edward St rickland, 'Boxer Byron: A Clare Obsession', Byron Tournal, 17 (1989), 57-76.

15 Joh n C lare, 'Essay on Landscape', The Prose of fohn Clare, ed. J.W. and Anne Tibhle {London: Rou tledge and Kegan Paul, 1951. Repr. 1970), p. 211.

16 Clare, 'Essay on Landscape', p. 212 (en1phasis added). 17 Ibid., p. 211. 18 ibid., p. 212. 19 ibid., p. 211. 20 Ibid., p. 213. 2 1 Willian1 Gilpin, An Essay on Prints, Fifth Edition (London: T . Cadcll a11d

W. Davies, 1802), p. xii. 22 William Gilpin, Tl1ree Essays: 011 Picturesque Beauty; 011 Picturesque Travel;

and on Sketching Landscape: to Which is Added a Poe1n, on Landscape Painting, Third Edition {London: T . Cadell and W. Davies [originally published London: R. Bla1nire, 1792]), p. 52.

23 Gilpin, Three Essays, p . 49. 24 Gilpin, Three Essays, p. 67. hl one of t wo supple111ental essays on sketching

appended to this volun1e, Gilpin explained that by copying nature h e nleant its distinct parts, 'not of putting the whole together in a picturesque n1aru1er; wh ich we seldon1 seek in nature, because it is seldom found. Nat ure gives us the materials of landscape; woods, rivers, lakes, trees, ground, and mountains: but leaves us to work them up int o pictures, as our fancy leads' (Three Essays, p. 159).

25 Gilpin, Three Essays, p. 26. 26 This tenden cy has been discussed extensively. See, for exai11ple, John

Barrell, The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place 1730-1840: An Approach to the Poetry of fohn Clare (Cambridge University Press, 1972); Elizabeth K. Heisinger, 'Clare and the Place of the Peasant Poet', Chapter 4 of Rural Scenes and National Representation: Britain, 1815-1850 (Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 141-61; and Jan1cs McRusick, 'Beyond the Visionary Con1pany: John Clare's resist ance to Ron1anticisn1', Haughton, pp. 221-37. For a n1ore recent treatlnent of Clare's particularit y see T in1othy Morton, ' John Clare's Dark Ecology', Studies in Romanticism, 47 (Summer 2008), 179-93.

27 Sin1on Jarvis, 'For a Poetics of Verse', PMLA, 125:4 {October 2010), 931. 28 Dcleuzc and Guattari, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, p. 19. 29 On 'Don Juan' as a con1n1odity object sec Russett and Golds111ith. 30 Letters, vol. 2, p. 711. 31 On Clare's use of the Byronic persona at this 1110111ent in the poen1,

see Russett, paragraph 15. 32 Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, p. 17. 33 ibid., p. 17.

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