TY - JOUR

T1 - Gazing on Guthlacian Reliques

T2 - John Clare's pilgrim-tourists and St Guthlac of Crowland

AU - Nuding, Emma

PY - 2022/7/1

Y1 - 2022/7/1

N2 - Scholars tend to view John Clare as a poet deeply entwined with fenland landscapes. However, long before Clare was walking, working and writing in such landscapes, they had their own textual histories, roving pilgrims and resident hermits — the most famous example of which is the eighth-century holy man, St Guthlac of Crowland. Given Clare and Guthlac’s overlapping geographies, it is unsurprising that Guthlacian content surfaces in two of Clare’s sonnets composed between 1825 and 1837, ‘Crowland Abbey’ and ‘Guthlac’s Stone’. Overall, there are many factors which brought Clare and Guthlac into each other’s fenland orbits: the reception of the Life of St Guthlac in discourses around Clare; the work of antiquaries in restoring Guthlacian remains on the fenland horizon; and, above all, Clare’s embeddedness within fenland networks and his walking practices over its flat expanses. However, despite Clare’s proximity to Guthlacian reliques in the fenland landscape, the textual inaccessibility of the saint’s narratives in the 1820s and 30s limited Clare’s interaction with the finer details of Guthlac’s Life. Thus, in Clare’s poetry, Guthlac remains a figure who is intriguingly, and beautifully, ‘half erased’.

AB - Scholars tend to view John Clare as a poet deeply entwined with fenland landscapes. However, long before Clare was walking, working and writing in such landscapes, they had their own textual histories, roving pilgrims and resident hermits — the most famous example of which is the eighth-century holy man, St Guthlac of Crowland. Given Clare and Guthlac’s overlapping geographies, it is unsurprising that Guthlacian content surfaces in two of Clare’s sonnets composed between 1825 and 1837, ‘Crowland Abbey’ and ‘Guthlac’s Stone’. Overall, there are many factors which brought Clare and Guthlac into each other’s fenland orbits: the reception of the Life of St Guthlac in discourses around Clare; the work of antiquaries in restoring Guthlacian remains on the fenland horizon; and, above all, Clare’s embeddedness within fenland networks and his walking practices over its flat expanses. However, despite Clare’s proximity to Guthlacian reliques in the fenland landscape, the textual inaccessibility of the saint’s narratives in the 1820s and 30s limited Clare’s interaction with the finer details of Guthlac’s Life. Thus, in Clare’s poetry, Guthlac remains a figure who is intriguingly, and beautifully, ‘half erased’.

KW - fens; John Clare; Guthlac; Crowland; inscriptions; ruins; sonnet; walking; hermits

M3 - Journal article

VL - 41

SP - 25

EP - 44

JO - John Clare Society Journal

JF - John Clare Society Journal

SN - 1356-7128

ER -