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
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Page 10
... double longing after innocence and happiness " ; that it is based on the philosophical antithesis of Art and Nature ; that its universal idea is the Golden Age ; that its fundamental motive is hostility to urban life ; that its " cen ...
... double longing after innocence and happiness " ; that it is based on the philosophical antithesis of Art and Nature ; that its universal idea is the Golden Age ; that its fundamental motive is hostility to urban life ; that its " cen ...
Page 11
... double longing " : Renato Poggioli , The Oaten Flute : Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal , ( Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 1975 ) , 1 ; ( 2 ) art and nature : Frank Kermode , English Pastoral Poetry : From the ...
... double longing " : Renato Poggioli , The Oaten Flute : Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal , ( Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 1975 ) , 1 ; ( 2 ) art and nature : Frank Kermode , English Pastoral Poetry : From the ...
Page 13
... double meaning . An anecdote is representative in that ( 1 ) it is a typical instance of an aspect of 8. Kenneth Burke , A Grammar of Motives ( Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press , 1969 ) , 59. Parenthetical page ...
... double meaning . An anecdote is representative in that ( 1 ) it is a typical instance of an aspect of 8. Kenneth Burke , A Grammar of Motives ( Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press , 1969 ) , 59. Parenthetical page ...
Page 20
... double implication of " even to us toiling in this late day . " " Us " is poised between the poet and the lives he ... double relation of the poet and his human community — a double- ness certainly felt by the egotist who called the poet ...
... double implication of " even to us toiling in this late day . " " Us " is poised between the poet and the lives he ... double relation of the poet and his human community — a double- ness certainly felt by the egotist who called the poet ...
Page 21
... double notion of all Arcadians being singers and yet of there being master singers who are preeminent among them . The passage concludes with two lines that are genuinely pastoral in mode . Wordsworth's mind seems to have dwelt on ...
... double notion of all Arcadians being singers and yet of there being master singers who are preeminent among them . The passage concludes with two lines that are genuinely pastoral in mode . Wordsworth's mind seems to have dwelt on ...
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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