Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset

The largely rural landscape of Dorset is widely seen as being essentially and traditionally English. In part, this perception has been entrenched in the public mind by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century writings of Thomas Hardy and, in more recent years, by numerous film and television...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jones, Roy, Dolin, Timothy
Other Authors: Rogerio Amoeda
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Green Lines Instituto para o Desenvolvimento Sustentavel 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33092
_version_ 1848753849837289472
author Jones, Roy
Dolin, Timothy
author2 Rogerio Amoeda
author_facet Rogerio Amoeda
Jones, Roy
Dolin, Timothy
author_sort Jones, Roy
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The largely rural landscape of Dorset is widely seen as being essentially and traditionally English. In part, this perception has been entrenched in the public mind by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century writings of Thomas Hardy and, in more recent years, by numerous film and television adaptations of his works. In an unrelated but in some ways parallel development, the Prince of Wales has encouraged the development of a present day version of a traditional English village at Poundbury on the outskirts of the county town of Dorchester (Hardy's Casterbridge). In this presentation, I argue that the surface features of past landscapes are often preserved or even recreated for contemporary purposes that have little to do with the (often agricultural) functions for which these landscape features were first devised and more to do with contemporary visions of heritage and even nationalism. This will be illustrated through the results of a survey of tourists at a variety of Hardy-related sites in and around Dorchester which considered the extent to which they sought and/or found rural landscapes which they could relate to Hardy's works. It will also consider the landscape of Poundbury, which has been developed as an idealisation of a traditional English village. Under the theme of heritage and sustainable development the paper will consider whether heritage(s) is/are being sustained, retained, transformed or creatively destroyed by literary tourism and royal property development in and around Dorchester.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T08:31:03Z
format Conference Paper
id curtin-20.500.11937-33092
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T08:31:03Z
publishDate 2012
publisher Green Lines Instituto para o Desenvolvimento Sustentavel
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-330922023-02-07T08:01:19Z Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset Jones, Roy Dolin, Timothy Rogerio Amoeda Sergio Lira Cristina Pinheiro Tourism Landscape Preservation Heritage The largely rural landscape of Dorset is widely seen as being essentially and traditionally English. In part, this perception has been entrenched in the public mind by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century writings of Thomas Hardy and, in more recent years, by numerous film and television adaptations of his works. In an unrelated but in some ways parallel development, the Prince of Wales has encouraged the development of a present day version of a traditional English village at Poundbury on the outskirts of the county town of Dorchester (Hardy's Casterbridge). In this presentation, I argue that the surface features of past landscapes are often preserved or even recreated for contemporary purposes that have little to do with the (often agricultural) functions for which these landscape features were first devised and more to do with contemporary visions of heritage and even nationalism. This will be illustrated through the results of a survey of tourists at a variety of Hardy-related sites in and around Dorchester which considered the extent to which they sought and/or found rural landscapes which they could relate to Hardy's works. It will also consider the landscape of Poundbury, which has been developed as an idealisation of a traditional English village. Under the theme of heritage and sustainable development the paper will consider whether heritage(s) is/are being sustained, retained, transformed or creatively destroyed by literary tourism and royal property development in and around Dorchester. 2012 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33092 Green Lines Instituto para o Desenvolvimento Sustentavel restricted
spellingShingle Tourism
Landscape Preservation
Heritage
Jones, Roy
Dolin, Timothy
Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset
title Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset
title_full Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset
title_fullStr Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset
title_full_unstemmed Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset
title_short Literary Heritage or National Heritage? Landscape Preservation and Change in Dorset
title_sort literary heritage or national heritage? landscape preservation and change in dorset
topic Tourism
Landscape Preservation
Heritage
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/33092