Country Life in the Poetry of John Clare

This thesis examines the economic transformations that reshaped rural life and labor in the poet's era, outlines the poet's personal history and circumstances, and analyzes how his verse records country scenes, seasonal rhythms, rural occupations, native flora and fauna, and responses to enclosure and social change. It traces recurring motifs and stylistic choices that convey intimacy with landscape, loss and resistance, and domestic detail, and organizes its argument into historical context, biographical background, and close readings of representative poems, with a concluding bibliography.