Criticism

Blackmore, Evan. "John Clare's Psychiatric Disorder and Its Influence on His Poetry." Victorian Poetry 24, No. 3 (Autumn 1986): 209-28.

Diagnoses Clare's psychiatric malady and examines the ways in which it influenced the style and subjects of his poems.

Constantine, David. "Outside Eden: John Clare's Descriptive Poetry." In An Infinite Complexity: Essays in Romanticism, edited by J. R. Watson, pp. 181-201. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983.

Explores Clare's relationship to his publishers and public, as well as to nature, his poverty, and his own poetry.

Gregory, Horace. "On John Clare, and the Sight of Nature in His Poetry." In his The Shield of Achilles: Essays on Beliefs in Poetry, pp. 21-32. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1944.

Provides a brief biographical sketch and compares Clare's poetry to that of William Blake and William Cowper.

Groves, David. "John Clare and James Hogg: Two Peasant Poets in the Athenaeum." Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 87, Nos. 2-3 (1986-87): 225-29.

Discusses how the nineteenth-century literary journal Athenaeum made a point of publishing new, workingclass poets of its day, including John Clare.

Howard, William James. John Clare. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981, 205 p.

A chronology, a brief biography, and an overview of John Clare's writings, including a selected bibliography.

Jack, Ian. "Poems of John Clare's Sanity." In Some British Romantics: A Collection of Essays, edited by James V. Logan, John E. Jordan, and Northrop Frye, pp. 191-232. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966.

Asserts that "it was Clare's misfortune to publish his finest volume [The Shepherd's Calendar] at a point when his countrymen were too deeply concerned with political and social reform to have any time to spare for poetry."

Lucas, John. "Prologue: Poetry and Possession." In his Modern English Poetry from Hardy to Hughes: A Critical Survey, pp. 9-21. London: Β. Τ. Batsford Ltd., 1986.

Analyzes Clare's poetry with regard to its essential "Englishness," i.e. its similarity to that of other writers of Clare's era.

——. "Revising Clare." In Romantic Revisions, edited by Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley, pp. 339-53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Examines the conflict that Clare experienced between his role as peasant and as poet and its effect today upon assessing the totality of his poetic works.

MacLennan, George. "John Clare: 'Literature Has Destroyed My Head and Brought Me Here.'" In his Lucid Interval: Subjective Writing and Madness in History, pp. 120-52. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992.

Looks at Clare's beginnings as a "peasant poet" but focuses in particular on the poems of his insanity and on his obsession with Mary Joyce.

Minor, Mark. "Clare, Byron, and the Bible: Additional Evidence from the Asylum Manuscripts." Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 85, No. 1 (Spring 1982): 104-26.

Studies the "Hebrew Melodies" of Clare's asylum years—lesser known poems that are both "scriptural paraphrases and Byronic imitations."

Murry, John Middleton. "The Poetry of John Clare." In his Countries of the Mind: Essays in Literary Criticism, pp. 103-19. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1922.

Argues that Clare's poetic gifts are inferior to those of one of his contemporaries, John Keats.

Pearce, Lynn. "John Clare's 'Child Harold': A Polyphonic Reading." Criticism XXXI, No. 2 (Spring 1989): 139-57.

Applies formal, deconstructive literary theory to Clare's "Child Harold," a poem which has conventionally been examined primarily for its interest as an asylum poem.

Robinson, Eric. '"To an Oaken Stem': John Clare's Poem Recovered and Reconsidered." The Review of English Studies XXXVIII n. s., No. 152 (November 1987): 483-91.

Assesses the poem "To an Oaken Stem" as indicative of "Clare's ability to unite man and nature without the flagrant moralizing of much eighteenth-century poetry."

Storey, Mark, ed. Clare: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973, 453 p.

An anthology of remarks made by Clare as well as criticism and reviews from others, dating from 1818 to 1964.

Strickland, Edward. "John Clare and the Sublime." Criticism XXIX, No. 2 (Spring 1987): 141-61.

Maintains that "Clare is poetically more conservative than any of the more famous Romantic poets" and does not often venture beyond descriptive nature poetry and the ballad form into the realm of the sublime.

——. "Boxer Byron: A Clare Obsession." The Byron Journal, No. 17 (1989): 57-76.

Investigates Clare's deep admiration for and imitation of the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron.

Swingle, L. J. "Stalking the Essential John Clare: Clare in Relation to His Romantic Contemporaries." Studies in Romanticism 14, No. 3 (Summer 1975): 273-84.

Contrasts Clare's early, descriptive poetry with the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats in order to demonstrate Clare's own poetic characteristics.

Wallace, Anne D. "Farming on Foot: Tracking Georgic in Clare and Wordsworth." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 34, No. 4 (Winter 1992): 509-40.

Discusses how Wordsworth and Clare each dealt with the limitations on nature and excursions that the enclosure acts presented to the English countryside and the English poet.

Additional coverage of Clare's life and career is contained in the following sources published by The Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 55, 96; Discovering Authors: British, Discovering Authors: Poets, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Vol. 9.