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 11
... leads Ettin , in my view , to a far too inclusive and impressionistic account of pastoral . Since Patterson's project involves the cultural and ideological afterlife of Representative Anecdotes and Ideas of Pastoral 11.
... leads Ettin , in my view , to a far too inclusive and impressionistic account of pastoral . Since Patterson's project involves the cultural and ideological afterlife of Representative Anecdotes and Ideas of Pastoral 11.
Page 15
... leads him to turn the chapter on " Scope and Reduction " into an ac- count of divine Creation as the act of acts ; in his later work it has caused him to replace dramatism by the transformed theology he calls " Logology . " 10 These ...
... leads him to turn the chapter on " Scope and Reduction " into an ac- count of divine Creation as the act of acts ; in his later work it has caused him to replace dramatism by the transformed theology he calls " Logology . " 10 These ...
Page 22
... lead to different accounts of pastoral . For many critics , these lines represent a landscape , while for others they represent two herdsmen in a char- acteristic situation . In either case , we must keep in mind the double meaning of ...
... lead to different accounts of pastoral . For many critics , these lines represent a landscape , while for others they represent two herdsmen in a char- acteristic situation . In either case , we must keep in mind the double meaning of ...
Page 26
... leads him to develop , in this eclogue , two versions of pastoral . From a poem like this , one can trace much of the subsequent course of pastoral poetry . An important descendant , for example , is the pastoral epi- sode in Book 6 of ...
... leads him to develop , in this eclogue , two versions of pastoral . From a poem like this , one can trace much of the subsequent course of pastoral poetry . An important descendant , for example , is the pastoral epi- sode in Book 6 of ...
Page 27
... lead their lives . Our guiding principle here should be what Burke calls the scene - agent ratio , " the synecdochic relation . . . between person and place . " 23 The presence , emergence , and history of pastoral land- scape is not a ...
... lead their lives . Our guiding principle here should be what Burke calls the scene - agent ratio , " the synecdochic relation . . . between person and place . " 23 The presence , emergence , and history of pastoral land- scape is not a ...
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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