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 |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 91
Page vii
... Convention 79 PART TWO 4 Representative Shepherds 137 5 Pastoral Speakers 185 6 Pastoral Lyrics and Their Speakers 223 7 Modern Pastoral Lyricism 260 8 Pastoral Narration 323 9 Pastoral Novels 375 Index 421 Preface This book seeks to ...
... Convention 79 PART TWO 4 Representative Shepherds 137 5 Pastoral Speakers 185 6 Pastoral Lyrics and Their Speakers 223 7 Modern Pastoral Lyricism 260 8 Pastoral Narration 323 9 Pastoral Novels 375 Index 421 Preface This book seeks to ...
Page ix
... convention — both what convention means in pastoral and why pastoral is so " conventional " a form . These chapters can be ... conventions of the eclogue tradition , but to all literature - poetry or prose , fiction or nonfiction — that ...
... convention — both what convention means in pastoral and why pastoral is so " conventional " a form . These chapters can be ... conventions of the eclogue tradition , but to all literature - poetry or prose , fiction or nonfiction — that ...
Page 6
... conventions it enacts . Irving Howe's false recollection of the episode was perfectly natural , the way any of us would be likely to remember this overwhelming moment in Levi's narrative . Howe , in effect , made the epi- sode a ...
... conventions it enacts . Irving Howe's false recollection of the episode was perfectly natural , the way any of us would be likely to remember this overwhelming moment in Levi's narrative . Howe , in effect , made the epi- sode a ...
Page 11
... conventions , or in a specific ( if pe- rennial ) subject , or in some continuity of feeling , attitude , " philosophical conception , " or mode of consciousness which informs the literary imagi- nation but originates outside it.5 It is ...
... conventions , or in a specific ( if pe- rennial ) subject , or in some continuity of feeling , attitude , " philosophical conception , " or mode of consciousness which informs the literary imagi- nation but originates outside it.5 It is ...
Page 12
... conventions or modes en- able new expression , which can be seen both to derive and be different from its models or preceding instances . " Continuity , " unmodified by a phrase like " deep and unbroken , " seems to me the word for this ...
... conventions or modes en- able new expression , which can be seen both to derive and be different from its models or preceding instances . " Continuity , " unmodified by a phrase like " deep and unbroken , " seems to me the word for this ...
Other editions - View all
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