Page 96 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Unit 8: Love Lives beyond the Tomb by John Clare

Though Clare had limited access to books, his poetic gift, which revealed itself early, was Notes
nourished by his parents’ store of folk ballads. Clare was an energetic autodidact, and his first
verses were much influenced by the Scottish poet James Thomson. Early disappointment in
love—for Mary Joyce, the daughter of a prosperous farmer—made a lasting impression on him
and served as a source of inspiration.
Clare, who grew up in a household with a father who could barely read and a mother who was
illiterate, was a powerful user of the English language but one who was never comfortable with
its grammatical conventions. In a modern society increasingly comfortable with spoken poetry
rather than words on a printed page, Clare’s work seemed newly significant. Public fascination
likewise resulted from the fact that Clare was institutionalized in an asylum in later years.
The precise nature of his illness is elusive, his madness seems at least to have begun with his
realization that he was at fundamental odds with the artistic culture in which he worked, and
that life, as a result, was beginning to twist its way around him.

8.1 About the Author

John Clare was born in Helpston, six miles to the north of the city of Peterborough. In his
lifetime, the village was in the Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire and his memorial
calls him “The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet”. Helpston now lies in the Peterborough unitary
authority of Cambridgeshire.

Figure 8.1: John Clare

Source: http://historymatrix.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clare.jpg

8.1.1 Early Life

John Clare became an agricultural labourer while still a child; however, he attended school in
Glinton church until he was twelve. In his early adult years, Clare became a potboy in the Blue
Bell public house and fell in love with Mary Joyce; but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade
her to meet him. Subsequently he was a gardener at Burghley House. He enlisted in the militia,
tried camp life with Gypsies, and worked in Pickworth as a lime burner in 1817. In the following
year, he was obliged to accept parish relief. Malnutrition stemming from childhood may be the
main culprit behind his 5-foot stature and may have contributed to his poor physical health in
later life.

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