Tayla Yeomans

As the Blakean vision of England and those tainted, “pleasant pastures” still serve as the perfect frame for the dissolution of rural communities today, this project aims to highlight the importance of such land to the longer narratives of Englishness. Within this, my work looks to rural landscapes as tangible records of the past, and their embedded mythopoetic history, to unpick England’s medieval heritage in connection with the political environment today.

Utilizing literary landscapes as signs of identity and difference, this investigation delves into the dominant conceptions of the national image where castles, churches and forests serve as emblems of the English spirit, and their destruction a signal of lost liberty. Reflecting on the broader public and institutional climate of ‘New England’, a system with origins in a medieval past, the project’s overarching message is driven by its reference to Robin Hood where the role of the forest, the conflict over its ownership and the symbolism of a rebel against tyranny is explored against the deforestation operations in my village.