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
... relation to each other . Two main irritants have led to my writing it ( I grant that it is up to me to produce the pearl ) . The first is the view that pastoral is moti- vated by naive idyllicism ; the second is the way modern studies ...
... relation to each other . Two main irritants have led to my writing it ( I grant that it is up to me to produce the pearl ) . The first is the view that pastoral is moti- vated by naive idyllicism ; the second is the way modern studies ...
Page xi
... relation to the reaper as Levinson says he does . That relation , as I hope my account of the poem makes clear , is a pastoral one , and one main purpose of this book is to argue that when pastoral writing is properly understood , it ...
... relation to the reaper as Levinson says he does . That relation , as I hope my account of the poem makes clear , is a pastoral one , and one main purpose of this book is to argue that when pastoral writing is properly understood , it ...
Page 12
... relation of literary works to their predeces- sors . In an essay on generic theory , Fredric Jameson offers a choice between two historical models — one " based on the identity between its various stages " and the other " based on ...
... relation of literary works to their predeces- sors . In an essay on generic theory , Fredric Jameson offers a choice between two historical models — one " based on the identity between its various stages " and the other " based on ...
Page 20
... an adverse fate , and the phrase , " entered , with Shakespeare's genius , " brilliantly suggests the double relation of the poet and his human community — a double- ness certainly felt by the egotist who called the poet 20 One.
... an adverse fate , and the phrase , " entered , with Shakespeare's genius , " brilliantly suggests the double relation of the poet and his human community — a double- ness certainly felt by the egotist who called the poet 20 One.
Page 22
... relation to something else , for which it stands or of which it is part . Hence there can be a double answer to the question : what do these representations represent ? For those nineteenth- century critics who regarded Theocritus as a ...
... relation to something else , for which it stands or of which it is part . Hence there can be a double answer to the question : what do these representations represent ? For those nineteenth- century critics who regarded Theocritus as 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