Creative responses to pre-historic monuments in early twentieth century literature:1900-1950

这个项目将探索对二十世纪早期文学中的史前纪念碑的创造性反应。选择五个英国和爱尔兰的古迹，我将采取一种‘地面’的研究方法，优先检查遗址本身。就像大卫·甘格(David Gange，2019)对沿海社区的研究一样，这个项目将向外努力，记录每一座纪念碑的当地历史，并构建一种20世纪初当地人如何理解它们的感觉。这个项目将提供对亚历山德拉·哈里斯所说的学术界的洞察，即“了解不同类型的人对居住在这些地方的人来说是什么样子”，并“深入了解景观和地方之间的历史关系”(Harris，2018)。通过优先考虑当地历史，这个项目将确定为什么这些“神奇的”遗址(Walsham，2011)成为创作灵感的来源，并研究在二十世纪的决定性时刻，学术和艺术反应如何影响今天公众对这些遗址的参与。通过关注五个精心挑选的史前和宗教遗址，包括：格拉斯顿伯里的圣杯井、赫里福德郡的亚瑟石、埃夫伯里郡的圣布里吉德井和朗康普顿的罗莱特石碑，这个项目将优先考虑地区来源，包括教区记录和数据库，如英国历史在线的“历史古迹目录”(1913年)。这将揭示这些纪念碑对当地社区意味着什么，并提供一个新的定向点，从这个角度来考虑20世纪文学对史前文学的迷恋(Radford，2014)。研究古迹的当地历史将使我能够通过分析基调和内容来评估书面创意回应的地区差异，并确定创意许可证认为古迹与客观观察和对遗址的公认学术概念有多远。通过研究民俗手册、考古报告、历史和二十世纪早期的小说，这个项目将考虑小说和非小说作家之间的相互联系--在作家之间画出新的和复杂的联系，包括：神秘主义者韦尔斯利·都铎·波尔和伊迪丝·奥利维尔，现代主义作家和哲学家约翰·考珀·波伊斯，以及创造性的考古思想家阿尔弗雷德·沃特金斯和埃米尔·埃文斯。奥利维尔和鲍伊斯等作家在地方社区和现代主义先锋艺术圈之间穿梭时，被批评者低估和难以捉摸的反应尤其值得学术关注。通过研究在高度现代主义和乡村社区之间起桥梁作用的人物，这个项目将引发关于作家在20世纪文学中对乡村主义和史前研究的价值被忽视的新的讨论。现代主义文学对史前和宗教的关注(刘易斯，2010)近年来得到了批判性的关注。然而，通过优先对特定古迹进行研究，该项目将第一次将该遗址与艺术观察隔离开来，并建立一项对回应的调查，以洞察人类与古代古迹的关系。将当地社区的声音与艺术家和学者的声音安排在一起，这个项目将比较这些难以捉摸的遗址所投射的不同含义，这些遗址一直在逃避人类的理解，并提供了一个新的起点，从这个起点来理解为什么它们吸引了20世纪的作家。

This project will explore creative responses to pre-historic monuments in early twentieth century literature. Selecting five British and Irish monuments, I will take a 'ground-up' research approach which prioritises examination of the site itself. Like David Gange's study of coastal communities (Gange, 2019), this project will work outwards to record each monument's local history and construct a sense of how they were understood by local people during the early twentieth century. This project will provide insight into what Alexandra Harris describes as academia's need to gain 'an understanding of what places have looked like to different kinds of people living in them' and 'fathom the historical relationships between landscape and place' (Harris, 2018). By prioritising local history, this project will identify why these 'numinous' (Walsham, 2011) sites became a source of creative inspiration and examine how academic and artistic responses, at a defining moment of the twentieth century, impact public engagement with the sites today.By focusing on five carefully selected pre-historic and religious sites, including: Glastonbury's chalice well, Arthur's Stone in Herefordshire, St Brigid's well in County Clare, Avebury, and Long Compton's Rollright Stones, this project will prioritise regional sources including parish records and databases such as British History Online's 'Inventory of Historic Monuments' (1913). This will reveal what these monuments meant to local communities and provide a new orientation point from which to consider twentieth century literature's fascination with pre-history (Radford, 2014). Studying the local history of the monuments will allow me to assess regional differences in written creative responses through the analysis of tone and content and identify how far creative licence sees the monument distanced from objective observation and accepted academic conceptions of the site. By examining folklore manuals, archaeological reports, histories, and early twentieth century fiction, this project will consider fiction andnon-fiction writers alongside one another - drawing new and complex connections between writers including: mystics Wellesley Tudor Pole and Edith Olivier, modernist writer and philosopher John Cowper Powys, and creative archaeological thinkers Alfred Watkins and Emyr Evans. The critically underestimated and elusive responses of writers like Olivier and Powys are particularly worthy of academic attention as they moved between local communities and modernist avant-garde artistic circles. By researching figures who act as a bridge between high modernism and rural communities, this project will prompt new discussions about writers whose value to the study of ruralism and pre-history in twentieth century literature has been overlooked.Modernist literature's preoccupation with pre-history and religion (Lewis, 2010) has gained critical attention in recent years. By prioritising a study of specific monuments, however, this project will be the first to isolate the site from artistic observations and build a survey of responses providing insight to human relationships with ancient monuments. Arranging the voices of local communities alongside those of artists and academics, this project will compare the diverse meanings projected onto these elusive sites which have continuously evaded human understanding and offer a new starting point from which to understand why they appeal to twentieth century writers.