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 13
... hand , the term does not carry its normal implications of a story , as the examples cited in the next paragraph show . ) " Representative , " as Burke uses it here , has a double meaning . An anecdote is representative in that ( 1 ) it ...
... hand , the term does not carry its normal implications of a story , as the examples cited in the next paragraph show . ) " Representative , " as Burke uses it here , has a double meaning . An anecdote is representative in that ( 1 ) it ...
Page 18
... hand , and an insipid plainness on the other . None of this will satisfy anyone today as criticism , but one can see that it is criticism . And it is criticism largely because its central idea takes the form of a representative anecdote ...
... hand , and an insipid plainness on the other . None of this will satisfy anyone today as criticism , but one can see that it is criticism . And it is criticism largely because its central idea takes the form of a representative anecdote ...
Page 24
... hand , brings out and intensifies what is idyllic , in the modern sense , in Theoc- 22. As pointed out in K. J. Dover , ed . , Theocritus , Select Poems , ( London : Macmillan , 1971 ) , 77 : " kai ... kai [ both . . . and ] is ...
... hand , brings out and intensifies what is idyllic , in the modern sense , in Theoc- 22. As pointed out in K. J. Dover , ed . , Theocritus , Select Poems , ( London : Macmillan , 1971 ) , 77 : " kai ... kai [ both . . . and ] is ...
Page 25
... hand , gives a quite dif- ferent version of pastoral song : formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas ( you teach the woods to resound lovely Amaryllis ) . Here man and landscape are intimately responsive to each other , in what the ...
... hand , gives a quite dif- ferent version of pastoral song : formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas ( you teach the woods to resound lovely Amaryllis ) . Here man and landscape are intimately responsive to each other , in what the ...
Page 29
... hands upon him , " that sensuous harmony in him is withdrawn , and he can now express himself only as a moral unity ... hand , arouses complex feelings , because the sentimental poet does not realize himself in his relation to actuality ...
... hands upon him , " that sensuous harmony in him is withdrawn , and he can now express himself only as a moral unity ... hand , arouses complex feelings , because the sentimental poet does not realize himself in his relation to actuality ...
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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