| This dissertation analyzes the Fens of eastern England, a landscape that lies a hundred miles north of London on the coast of the North Sea, as both a natural feature of land and water and a product of human storytelling and art. As a culturally built entity, the modern history and stories of the Fens cannot escape the mythic architecture upon which they are built. In the medieval period this swampy landscape was composed of crisscrossing waterways populated by sharp reeds and swarms of disease-infected insects, and the early literary record demonstrates a cultural understanding of the Fens as the dwelling place of outlaws, exiles, monsters, and demons. My first chapter describes the foundation of the mythology of the Fens through an analysis of the landscapes depicted in Anglo-Saxon literature and history, most notably through the narratives of the eighth-century warrior/saint Guthlac and the epic poem Beowulf. In successive chapters on the late Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Fens, I utilize texts such as The Deeds of Hereward, the drama of Ben Jonson, the poetry of John Clare, and the novels of Graham Swift and Dorothy L. Sayers in their literary and cultural construction of the Fens. My dissertation uses interdisciplinary textual analysis as well as my own first-hand travel experience to illustrate how this mythical coding of the landscape as a haunted and fiercely contested place persists into the modern world, despite centuries of land reclamation and climate change.;I further argue that the concept of a culturally constructed landscape offers a new critical paradigm that can be used in other medieval and modern contexts to identify the stories from which we create culture and civilization. While there are many studies on English landscapes, as well as many biographies and stories written by residents of the Fens, my project integrates this diverse literature into a cultural history and illuminates this history with spatially and ecologically informed criticism. |
