Bethia had been researching references to solitary bees in English literature for three years. In that time she had come across numerous mentions of honey bees, and many generic uses of the words ‘bee’ and ‘bees’. But she had found only a handful of instances of a phrase she could say with confidence referred to a solitary bee. The rural poet John Clare stood out in particular as a source of identifiable references. This had surprised her given that more than ninety percent of bee species in the UK are solitary bees and that they can be easily observed, as they were by Clare, in meadows, on heaths, and even in gardens. The research data led her to wonder how solitary bees had escaped the attention of poets, dramatists and novelists for so long. She was undertaking a Foucauldian analysis to explain this phenomenon in an essay called ‘The absence of solitary bees in English literature’
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Words & Picture
Simon Collings
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