From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epic

When he sees the young woman who is going to be the new lodger of the bedsit next to his, Arthur Bailey, an elderly painter who now lives as a recluse in post-World War Two London, is suddenly thrown back into the past. The images of the Boer War which had been haunting him for so long resurface, an...

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Main Author: Mathilde Rogez
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2022-06-01
Series:Revue LISA
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/14050
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author Mathilde Rogez
author_facet Mathilde Rogez
author_sort Mathilde Rogez
collection DOAJ
description When he sees the young woman who is going to be the new lodger of the bedsit next to his, Arthur Bailey, an elderly painter who now lives as a recluse in post-World War Two London, is suddenly thrown back into the past. The images of the Boer War which had been haunting him for so long resurface, and become interlaced with those of the Blitz, the ruins of London evoking a Gothic landscape. Written from a country still probing its own wounds almost a century and half later, The Landscape Painter (2011), Craig Higginson’s fourth novel, intertwines representations of conflicts in both the then colony and the metropolis, and combines genres and mediums: in the same way the painter of the title alternates between the sublime and the picturesque, the author mingles the lyrical, the epic and the plaasroman (or farm novel), so as to question traditional national narratives. After a series of wars which have broken the characters’ minds and maimed their bodies, language itself has been affected, disarticulated, so that the novel simultaneously questions how to re-present or commemorate those conflicts, both far and close, (inter)national, colonial and personal, the political and the esthetic being thus intimately entangled.
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spelling doaj-art-7565abebbdf04b4e94f325a2e731c8042025-01-06T09:03:35ZengPresses universitaires de RennesRevue LISA1762-61532022-06-012010.4000/lisa.14050From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epicMathilde RogezWhen he sees the young woman who is going to be the new lodger of the bedsit next to his, Arthur Bailey, an elderly painter who now lives as a recluse in post-World War Two London, is suddenly thrown back into the past. The images of the Boer War which had been haunting him for so long resurface, and become interlaced with those of the Blitz, the ruins of London evoking a Gothic landscape. Written from a country still probing its own wounds almost a century and half later, The Landscape Painter (2011), Craig Higginson’s fourth novel, intertwines representations of conflicts in both the then colony and the metropolis, and combines genres and mediums: in the same way the painter of the title alternates between the sublime and the picturesque, the author mingles the lyrical, the epic and the plaasroman (or farm novel), so as to question traditional national narratives. After a series of wars which have broken the characters’ minds and maimed their bodies, language itself has been affected, disarticulated, so that the novel simultaneously questions how to re-present or commemorate those conflicts, both far and close, (inter)national, colonial and personal, the political and the esthetic being thus intimately entangled.https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/14050epicgenresHigginson Craighistoriographic metafictionlyricalplaasroman
spellingShingle Mathilde Rogez
From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epic
Revue LISA
epic
genres
Higginson Craig
historiographic metafiction
lyrical
plaasroman
title From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epic
title_full From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epic
title_fullStr From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epic
title_full_unstemmed From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epic
title_short From the Blitz to the Boer War, Re-presenting (Inter)National and Colonial Wars and Personal Traumas: Craig Higginson’s The Landscape Painter as a lyrical epic
title_sort from the blitz to the boer war re presenting inter national and colonial wars and personal traumas craig higginson s the landscape painter as a lyrical epic
topic epic
genres
Higginson Craig
historiographic metafiction
lyrical
plaasroman
url https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/14050
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