Radford, A. (2012) The enchantment of place: Mary Butts, Wessex, and interwar neo-romanticism. National Identities, 14(2), pp. 157-172. (doi: 10.1080/14608944.2012.670213)
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Abstract
This article offers an interdisciplinary view of the complex iconography of ‘Wessex-ness’ in the politically disruptive writing of Mary Butts (1890–1937). My argument locates Butts' theories of historically embedded selfhood in the context of interwar neo-romanticism led by the landscape painter, illustrator and designer Paul Nash's articles on the national disposition of contemporary pictorial expression. The neo-romantic enterprise sought to evoke and enshrine mystical unspoilt hinterlands in the furthest corners of the island nation; its ideals left a clear imprint on cultural artefacts and practices as various as travelogues, mass advertising publicity, urban planning and aerial archaeology. However Mary Butts' journalistic and fictional texts reveal a radically ambivalent attitude towards this cultural phenomenon. Indeed, her neo-romantic stress on safeguarding the ‘streams’ of ‘Wessex’ from external threat blurs into a partisan and divisive chauvinism that upholds an ethos of territorial as well as ethnic purity.
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Radford, Dr Andrew |
| Authors: | Radford, A. |
| College/School: | College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature |
| Journal Name: | National Identities |
| ISSN: | 1460-8944 |
| Published Online: | 22 June 2012 |
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