John Clare, "The Village Minstrel" Presentation

John Clare

“The Village Minstrel”

1821

Background Information:

—Born July 13^th 1793, died May 20^th 1864.

— English poet (considered one of the most important 19^th century poets) and prose writer.

—Grew up around agriculture  

—Known to be an alcoholic

—Was confined to a private insane asylum in 1837

Check this out ^ it's John Clare's Cottage!
The Cottage has been restored, using traditional building methods, to create a centre where people can learn about John Clare, his works, how rural people lived in the early 19th century and also gain an understanding of the environment in which John Clare worked.

Publication:

—“The Village Minstrel” was published in 1821.

—Published by the Taylor and Hessey publishing firm.

—John Taylor (of the publishing firm Taylor and Hessey) published Clare’s poems “Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery” in 1820. This poem was highly praised which helped him Clare succeed in publishing “The Village Minstrel”. Taylor played a large role in the publication of Clare's poems. He edited the poems for the press, and added the punctuation that is in the original edition.

“The Village Minstrel”:

—At first, “The Village Minstrel” sold poorly due to a lack of demand for rural verse.

—The poems in “The Village Minstrel” engage in a variety of styles and subjects, but the general theme is the value of country sports and customs with changes to the landscape and the economy (this relates, in particular, to the theme of collecting nature).

-Clare's mental health had begun to deteriorate and thus Clare himself is the hero of his poem. He paints with glowing vigour, through the character of Lubin, the misery in which he then was, and his anxiety for his future fate. It is a fine picture of rural life, and the author luxuriates in his love of natural objects and his desciption of rustic sports and village scenes

—-The sonnets within “The Village Minstrel” demonstrate Clare’s experimentation with his own distinctive style.

"And tales of fairy-land he lov'd to hear"

Composition:

—Clare's Minstrel appears to be without any plan, and is composed principally of detached descriptions, most of which might change places with one another, without the reader's being conscious of the alteration. 

Criticism:

—“The Village Minstrel” was met with few positive reviews. Critics believed Clare to lack education and thought his work “at the utmost, a place above mediocrity.”

—Contemporary critics praise Clare’s descriptions of nature, but his poetry is devoid of the intellectual element that characterizes the works of John Keats and William Wordsworth.

—Others, however, see the diversity of literary voices in his works as well as his deep concern for and love and understanding of the rural environment as evidence of his poetic skill and intellect.

—“The greatest laboring class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood and of the alienated and unstable self.” –Jonathan Bates (Scholar of romanticism and British academic)

Original Visual of “The Village Minstrel”

http://books.google.com/books?id=uiwJAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://johnclaresociety.blogspot.com/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-clare
http://www.poemhunter.com/john-clare/
http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=36354
http://www.clarecottage.org/