What Is Pastoral?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 |
From inside the book
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Page ix
... clear about what does and does not count as an example of the phenomenon in question . Hence when a colleague asked me what would be the book's surpris- ing examples , I answered , " None . " My endeavor is rather to treat evident ex ...
... clear about what does and does not count as an example of the phenomenon in question . Hence when a colleague asked me what would be the book's surpris- ing examples , I answered , " None . " My endeavor is rather to treat evident ex ...
Page xi
... clear , is a pastoral one , and one main purpose of this book is to argue that when pastoral writing is properly understood , it can be seen to be far more aware of itself and its conditions than it has usually been thought to be , or ...
... clear , is a pastoral one , and one main purpose of this book is to argue that when pastoral writing is properly understood , it can be seen to be far more aware of itself and its conditions than it has usually been thought to be , or ...
Page 5
... clear June sky . I began to thank him , but he stopped me : it was not necessary . One could see the Carpathians covered in snow . I breathed in the fresh air , I felt unusually light - hearted . " Tu es fou de marcher si vite . On a le ...
... clear June sky . I began to thank him , but he stopped me : it was not necessary . One could see the Carpathians covered in snow . I breathed in the fresh air , I felt unusually light - hearted . " Tu es fou de marcher si vite . On a le ...
Page 6
... clear from Primo Levi's book about Auschwitz , it is that the episode as Howe recounts it could not have happened . Under ordinary conditions of life in the camp , one did not remember lines of poetry . The des- perate weariness , the ...
... clear from Primo Levi's book about Auschwitz , it is that the episode as Howe recounts it could not have happened . Under ordinary conditions of life in the camp , one did not remember lines of poetry . The des- perate weariness , the ...
Page 8
... clear idea of what they mean by it . Yet there is no principled account of it on which most people agree , and it sometimes seems as if there are as many versions of pastoral as there are critics and scholars who write about it . Apart ...
... clear idea of what they mean by it . Yet there is no principled account of it on which most people agree , and it sometimes seems as if there are as many versions of pastoral as there are critics and scholars who write about it . Apart ...
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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