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 ix
... means in pastoral and why pastoral is so " conventional " a form . These chapters can be thought of as synchronic , while those in Part II are diachronic . They trace two large developments of pastoral writing : poetry ( chapters 4-7 ) ...
... means in pastoral and why pastoral is so " conventional " a form . These chapters can be thought of as synchronic , while those in Part II are diachronic . They trace two large developments of pastoral writing : poetry ( chapters 4-7 ) ...
Page xi
... means , ipso facto , that the questions she raises are not significant - that we should simply let the writing of the past be what it is . " What it is " is what we make it out to be , and it is precisely this that is so variously and ...
... means , ipso facto , that the questions she raises are not significant - that we should simply let the writing of the past be what it is . " What it is " is what we make it out to be , and it is precisely this that is so variously and ...
Page 6
... mean to say that Levi's episode is in itself pastoral . It has a pastoral feeling at the beginning , with the warmth of the sun , the fresh air , and the free perambulation , with purpose temporarily suspended ; Jean the Pi- kolo has a ...
... mean to say that Levi's episode is in itself pastoral . It has a pastoral feeling at the beginning , with the warmth of the sun , the fresh air , and the free perambulation , with purpose temporarily suspended ; Jean the Pi- kolo has a ...
Page 8
... mean by it . Yet there is no principled account of it on which most people agree , and it sometimes seems as if there are as many versions of pastoral as there are critics and scholars who write about it . Apart from the happy confu ...
... mean by it . Yet there is no principled account of it on which most people agree , and it sometimes seems as if there are as many versions of pastoral as there are critics and scholars who write about it . Apart from the happy confu ...
Page 9
... means of the genera dicendi — the high , middle , and low styles to which , by a coincidence which had a great deal of weight for critics since late antiquity , Virgil's three major works seemed to correspond . Thinking of pastoral as ...
... means of the genera dicendi — the high , middle , and low styles to which , by a coincidence which had a great deal of weight for critics since late antiquity , Virgil's three major works seemed to correspond . Thinking of pastoral as ...
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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