Four views of the rural space in the European lyric tradition from romantic to modern
Four views of the rural space in the European lyric tradition from romantic to modern

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, through of reading of poetry from several European traditions, we distinguish and continue to describe for views of the rural space in our corpus from the romantic to the modern eras. The traditions we concentrate on are those of Ireland and Wales, two countries in which Celtic languages are spoken, England and Romania, with reference also to France. The texts we have chosen for analysis are in the Irish, Welsh, English, Romanian and French languages. The four views we distinguish are: 1. The view of the native metropolitan poet for whom the rural space is distant. 2. The view of the metropolitan poet who migrates to the rural space and spends time there. 3. The view of the rural poet who migrates to the metropole and writes there of his native place. 4. The view of the rural poet who remains in his native environment. And among the conclusions we shall draw figure the following In the English and French traditions, the cultures of the rural space are often alien to metropolitan poetry and thought, while in the Irish, Welsh and Romanian traditions, the poetry is often an integral part of the agrotope. While separated from one another by the western expanses of the European sub-continent, the peripheral west and east, ‘Celtic’ and Romanian respectively, have preserved in their literatures and cultures echoes of things diminished elsewhere in Europe during recent centuries of industrial development, scientific progress, rationalism and utilitarianism. In the Celtic and Romanian traditions, we will find the people who inhabit the rural space, see their faces, hear their voices, know their joys and tribulations, while in the metropolitan traditions of other countries, the rural space will tend to remain anonymous and impenetrable.

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