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 3
... lines Think of your breed ; for brutish ignorance Your mettle was not made ; you were made men To follow after knowledge and excellence . 1. The book is published in England under this title , which correctly translates the Italian ...
... lines Think of your breed ; for brutish ignorance Your mettle was not made ; you were made men To follow after knowledge and excellence . 1. The book is published in England under this title , which correctly translates the Italian ...
Page 4
... lines flood the hearts of the prisoners , so that " for a moment I forget who I am and where I am " and the wretched might suppose they are still human beings . This incident , stirring enough as Howe recounts it , is made even more ...
... lines flood the hearts of the prisoners , so that " for a moment I forget who I am and where I am " and the wretched might suppose they are still human beings . This incident , stirring enough as Howe recounts it , is made even more ...
Page 19
... lines , that in the May eclogue we see " Spenser's idealization of pastoral life . " My discussion below of the lines about As You Like It will suggest that there is a similar diminishing and trivializing of Wordsworth's sense of his ...
... lines , that in the May eclogue we see " Spenser's idealization of pastoral life . " My discussion below of the lines about As You Like It will suggest that there is a similar diminishing and trivializing of Wordsworth's sense of his ...
Page 21
... lines that are genuinely pastoral in mode . Wordsworth's mind seems to have dwelt on Phoebe sighing for the false Gany- mede , but the reasons do not become clear until the 1850 version gives the line a context which releases its ...
... lines that are genuinely pastoral in mode . Wordsworth's mind seems to have dwelt on Phoebe sighing for the false Gany- mede , but the reasons do not become clear until the 1850 version gives the line a context which releases its ...
Page 22
... lines as an anecdote — that is , as a brief and compendious rendering of a certain situation or type of life . Viewing the passage this way , we would not try to pick out one or two features as definitive . Rather , we can see that all ...
... lines as an anecdote — that is , as a brief and compendious rendering of a certain situation or type of life . Viewing the passage this way , we would not try to pick out one or two features as definitive . Rather , we can see that all ...
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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