ABSTRACT
The explosion of interest in animal studies in the last decade has given critics a new reason to focus on John Clare. In his early poetry, John Clare establishes an inclusive community of creatures, a creature community, detailing an understanding of living together with animals in his native Northamptonshire. This chapter highlights mourning and communion, both of which are enacted through language. The dog speaks through silence about pain. A farmer by trade, Clare's reception by contemporary reviewers as a Georgic 'unspoiled rustic poet' situates Clare himself in the rural landscape alongside his creatures, identifying a lasting concern with his work: the extent to which the poet adopts and adapts extant poetic material and form alongside original interpretations of nature. The Romantic plough-boy poet and young contemporary of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb established a unique Pantisocratic community in his poetry that his contemporaries could not establish in life.
