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 15
... play- ful side of Burke knows this perfectly well . Early in A Grammar of Motives he says that " the Edenic paradigm " would be " applicable if we were capable of total acts that produce total transformations . In reality , we are ...
... play- ful side of Burke knows this perfectly well . Early in A Grammar of Motives he says that " the Edenic paradigm " would be " applicable if we were capable of total acts that produce total transformations . In reality , we are ...
Page 20
... play become inhabitants of Arden . In 1805 Wordsworth merely says that Shakespeare placed them there . Now he describes them , accurately , as driven from home by an adverse fate , and the phrase , " entered , with Shakespeare's genius ...
... play become inhabitants of Arden . In 1805 Wordsworth merely says that Shakespeare placed them there . Now he describes them , accurately , as driven from home by an adverse fate , and the phrase , " entered , with Shakespeare's genius ...
Page 21
... play , as an observer , the sophisticated consciousness , knows it . It also renders Phoebe's sighing and disappointment from her point of view : " false " is felt to mean not simply " not actual , " but " untrue , " " false to me ...
... play , as an observer , the sophisticated consciousness , knows it . It also renders Phoebe's sighing and disappointment from her point of view : " false " is felt to mean not simply " not actual , " but " untrue , " " false to me ...
Page 23
... play as I will on a rustic pipe.20 We can regard these lines , which set an exchange about pastoral song at the head of a collection of bucolics , as a version of Theocritus's opening lines.21 Our understanding of the character of the ...
... play as I will on a rustic pipe.20 We can regard these lines , which set an exchange about pastoral song at the head of a collection of bucolics , as a version of Theocritus's opening lines.21 Our understanding of the character of the ...
Page 25
... play , " so that the half - line " ludere quae vellem " has larger suggestions of freedom , which I have tried to convey by translating , " play as I will . " But the line concludes by scaling down these intimations to the music played ...
... play , " so that the half - line " ludere quae vellem " has larger suggestions of freedom , which I have tried to convey by translating , " play as I will . " But the line concludes by scaling down these intimations to the music played ...
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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