Rural Landscape In The Nineteenth Century English Painting And Literature

The nineteenth century Britain was in a period of rapid changes as the nation was transformed from an agricultural country to an industrial one. The Industrial Revolution created social change, unrest, and eventually turbulence. Deep-rooted traditions were overturned and the whole landscape of the country ,especially the countryside changed. The traditional pastoral landscape of the English countryside was being encroached and a new landscape was created. John Constable's oil paintings.The Hay-Wain(1821) ,presents a completely positive view of the countryside. In this painting and Constable's other paintings ,the rural is represented as a place of beauty, stability, tradition, peace, wealth, harmony, innocence and virtue. Humanity is at one with nature and there is no hint of the industrialization that was threatening the pastoral landscape of nineteenth century England. While the poems, non-fiction prose and novels of this period shows almost a very different view of the countryside. The countryside is portrayed as places of dullness, idiocy, wildness, turbulence and destitution. Interestingly both images created in Constable's paintings and the literature of this period are connected to the issue of making the nation of Britain. They both play a very important role in creating and forging British national identity. This paper should explore the social, cultural and ideological motives of the representation of the countryside in paintings and literature. It sets out to explore the fusion of the two different visions in the 'project' of imaging community.