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The Worker in the Landscape: Constable, Marx, Poetry

The Worker in the Landscape: Constable, Marx, Poetry Since John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972) Marxist criticism of John Constable has criticised his landscapes as ‘Tory’ mystifications of the condition of the agricultural worker. This essay challenges this Marxist approach by returning to the philosophical basis of the traditional approach to painting to which Constable subscribed: ut pictura poesis. It is argued that his relation of poetry to landscape seeks to emphasize the importance of agricultural labour to all human activity and by uniting the diurnal with the demotic enhances the status of the common worker. In this respect Marxist criticism, properly applied, should read Constable positively. By altering perception of the importance of labour Constable, like early Wordsworth, or Blake and Shelley, is a potentially revolutionary artist. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Romanticism Edinburgh University Press

The Worker in the Landscape: Constable, Marx, Poetry

Romanticism , Volume 26 (3): 12 – Oct 1, 2020

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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
1354-991X
eISSN
1750-0192
DOI
10.3366/rom.2020.0476
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Since John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972) Marxist criticism of John Constable has criticised his landscapes as ‘Tory’ mystifications of the condition of the agricultural worker. This essay challenges this Marxist approach by returning to the philosophical basis of the traditional approach to painting to which Constable subscribed: ut pictura poesis. It is argued that his relation of poetry to landscape seeks to emphasize the importance of agricultural labour to all human activity and by uniting the diurnal with the demotic enhances the status of the common worker. In this respect Marxist criticism, properly applied, should read Constable positively. By altering perception of the importance of labour Constable, like early Wordsworth, or Blake and Shelley, is a potentially revolutionary artist.

Journal

RomanticismEdinburgh University Press

Published: Oct 1, 2020

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