by Belloc · Cluster: Travel Writing · Pilgrimage · Landscape
Abstract
An essay-history of the Lower Thames as ‘London River’, framed by a firsthand voyage up the tide from the sea to the Pool that reads the past in successive stratified layers. Belloc contrasts the Thames with the Scheldt and Seine, attacks materialist history and the desolation wrought by modern industrialism, and mourns the Gothic London lost to the Great Fire, insisting London is a ‘function of the Thames’.
Testo / Text
Connections
Forms & Genres: History, Essay, Travel Writing, Nonfiction Themes & Concepts: Anti-Industrialism, Critique of Progress, Nature, Materialism, Tradition, Nature vs Civilization, Economics Motifs: River, Ship, Fog and Smoke, Ruins the Abbey, Water, Sea and Voyage Historical References: Roman History, Industrial Revolution, Medieval England, Reformation Settings: River Thames, London Topoi: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, Book of Nature
Also relevant to: Alienation · Outsider · Exile