What Is Pastoral?University of Chicago Press, Mar 15, 2011 - 444 pages One of the enduring traditions of Western literary history, pastoral is often mischaracterized as a catchall for literature about rural themes and nature in general. In What Is Pastoral?, distinguished literary historian Paul Alpers argues that pastoral is based upon a fundamental fiction—that the lives of shepherds or other socially humble figures represent the lives of human beings in general. Ranging from Virgil's Eclogues to Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Hardy and Frost, this work brings the story of the pastoral tradition, previously limited to classical and Renaissance literature, into the twentieth century. Pastoral reemerges in this account not as a vehicle of nostalgia for some Golden Age, nor of escape to idyllic landscapes, but as a mode bearing witness to the possibilities and problems of human community and shared experience in the real world. A rich and engrossing book, What Is Pastoral? will soon take its place as the definitive study of pastoral literature. "Alpers succeeds brilliantly. . . . [He] offers . . . a wealth of new insight into the origins, development, and flowering of the pastoral."—Ann-Maria Contarino, Renaissance Quarterly |
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Page xiii
... Theocritus , ed . A. S. F. Gow , 2 vols . ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1952 ) Theocritus , Idylls , trans . R. C. Trevelyan ( New York : Albert and Charles Boni , 1925 ) Virgil , Eclogues , Latin text and translation from ...
... Theocritus , ed . A. S. F. Gow , 2 vols . ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1952 ) Theocritus , Idylls , trans . R. C. Trevelyan ( New York : Albert and Charles Boni , 1925 ) Virgil , Eclogues , Latin text and translation from ...
Page 5
... Theocritus's greatest poems and quotes some of his verses , but it qualifies its imitation by the initiating political circum- stances ( completely absent from Theocritus ) and by the Prologue 5.
... Theocritus's greatest poems and quotes some of his verses , but it qualifies its imitation by the initiating political circum- stances ( completely absent from Theocritus ) and by the Prologue 5.
Page 6
Paul Alpers. stances ( completely absent from Theocritus ) and by the motif of imperfect memory . Thus in the very act of re - singing their predecessors , Virgil's shep- herds and the poet himself question the extent to which such ...
Paul Alpers. stances ( completely absent from Theocritus ) and by the motif of imperfect memory . Thus in the very act of re - singing their predecessors , Virgil's shep- herds and the poet himself question the extent to which such ...
Page 9
... Theocritus and who refers to Virgil's Eclogues elsewhere , says nothing about it in the Ars Poe- tica . In the Renaissance , the Horatian tradition of surveying all known or ap- proved kinds of poetry produced passages in various artes ...
... Theocritus and who refers to Virgil's Eclogues elsewhere , says nothing about it in the Ars Poe- tica . In the Renaissance , the Horatian tradition of surveying all known or ap- proved kinds of poetry produced passages in various artes ...
Page 11
... Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric ( Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press , 1969 ) , 42-44 ; ( 8 ) aesthetic Platonism : Richard Cody , The Landscape of the Mind : Pastoralism and Platonic Theory in Tasso's ...
... Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric ( Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press , 1969 ) , 42-44 ; ( 8 ) aesthetic Platonism : Richard Cody , The Landscape of the Mind : Pastoralism and Platonic Theory in Tasso's ...
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Common terms and phrases
Adam Bede Appleton House Arcadia begins bird brings bucolic calls Cardenio chapter character Colin Clout critics Daphnis and Chloe Diana Don Quixote double Dunnet Eclogue Empson episode erotic feel fiction figure final flowers genre goatherd herdsmen human Idyll imagination innocence landscape lines literary lives lovers Lycidas lyric Marvell's means Melibee Meliboeus's mode Mopsus mower naive narrative narrator's nature novel nymphs passage pastoral convention pastoral elegy pastoral narration pastoral poetry pastoral representation pastoral romance pastoral speaker Pedlar Phebe phrase play poem poet poet's poetic present question reader Renaissance representative anecdote Rosalind Ruined Cottage rural rustic says scene seems self-representation sense sestina Shakespeare Shepheardes Calender shepherds Silas Marner Silas's simply singer singing Sireno song speaks speech Spenser's stanza story suggests tale Theocritean Theocritus Theocritus's Thyrsis tion Tityrus Tityrus's toral traditional University Press utterance verse versions of pastoral Virgil's Virgilian voice words Wordsworth