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Peter Ackroyd is a firm believer in genius loci – the spirit of place and it is precisely the genius loci that nourishes the imagination of the people living at the place. Ackroyd declares in Albion that “a local area can guide and influence all those who inhabit” (499). In English Music, Timothy can reenergize himself in the rural landscape whenever he feels disoriented in city London after a disappointing experience. It is particularly through communication with the land that him feels being nourished. The land has become a fertile ground for healing and recovery, stimulating the inner growth of the protagonist Timothy and his psychic powers through muted communications.

Timothy’s turn to the rural landscape stems from the destruction of the community in London which comes along with Clement Harcombe’s resignation as a medium healer. As depicted in English Music, institutions built in late capitalistic period have largely obliterated the past: chain stores and supermarkets have replaced family shops and the Chemical Theatre where the Harcombe used to heal the others. There have even been years without members communicating with each other. Margaret, a brisk and righteous woman, is killed by a newspaper van, when the horse trampled on her. When Timothy is still looking for her, her house is being torn down by “the large stone ball of the demolishers’ crane”, while “two or three neighbours had already gathered to watch this spectacle” (EM, 236). The scene symbolizes the victory of mechanical civilization which is accompanied by the apathy of the mankind.

2.2 The Flora as a Spiritual Bond: The Relief of Grief

The image of the flora is usually marginal and thus tends to be overlooked in texts; plant metaphors are often simply taken as a part of the figurative language in general, and seldom do people see how such metaphors could be connected to a broader landscape of meaning. Such a case is reflected in a piece of criticism concerning Ackroyd’s description of trees. “The biggest problem”, as Christopher Hitchens critiques, “is its frequent inability to identify as ‘English’ anything that could not be attributed as well to other nations. For instance, much of what Ackroyd writes about the English love of trees could apply equally to Germany or Russia” (Lewis, 186). Therefore, this raises the question, is the tree in England truly identical to that of Germany or Russia? Peter Ackroyd seems to have already given his answer in English Music:

There are the spirits of landscape. The spirits of a nation. You know when you are in England, don’t you? How different it is from the atmosphere of France, and how different France is from Germany? We might even call this the spirit of the past. The spirit of time. It is part of us, you see ... (EM, 338)

For Ackroyd, landscapes are endowed with national spirit, thus the trees in Britain are quite different from those in other countries. Earlier criticism frequently overlooks the extent to which flora symbols are known and expressed in the early modern period, hence their absence in many textual readings本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。