John Clare, The Village Minstrel

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The two-volume collection

The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems

(1821) was the “Northamptonshire Peasant Poet” John Clare’s second publication, following

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery

(1820). The collection is divided into two sections: “Poems”, which makes up the first volume and part of the second, comprises seventy-one poems of various forms, opening with the long, semi-autobiographical “The Village Minstrel”; the second section, which ends the second volume, is made up of sixty sonnets.

Like their predecessors, the poems in The Village Minstrel are broadly “descriptive of rural life and scenery”. Clare presents vignettes of rural work and leisure, describing the daily life of the village (“Rural Morning” and “Rural Evening”), its pastimes

2751 words

Citation: Smith, Andrew. "The Village Minstrel". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 February 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8054, accessed 09 December 2024.]

8054 The Village Minstrel 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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