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 x
... understanding literary and cultural phenomena diachronically . I would call the analogous understanding , as it applies to historically contemporary phe- nomena , diachoric ( from Greek chōra , place , country ) . This is a formalist ...
... understanding literary and cultural phenomena diachronically . I would call the analogous understanding , as it applies to historically contemporary phe- nomena , diachoric ( from Greek chōra , place , country ) . This is a formalist ...
Page 7
... of Levi's Ulysses episode show why this mode of poetry has been and should remain part of the way we value and understand our lives and our writings . One REPRESENTATIVE ANECDOTES AND IDEAS OF Pastoral 8 I Pastoral Prologue 7.
... of Levi's Ulysses episode show why this mode of poetry has been and should remain part of the way we value and understand our lives and our writings . One REPRESENTATIVE ANECDOTES AND IDEAS OF Pastoral 8 I Pastoral Prologue 7.
Page 17
... understand- ing . Rapin goes on to give his representative anecdote its final form , its title , Burke would say : Pastorals were the invention of the simplicity and innocence of [ the ] Gol- den age , if there was ever any such , or ...
... understand- ing . Rapin goes on to give his representative anecdote its final form , its title , Burke would say : Pastorals were the invention of the simplicity and innocence of [ the ] Gol- den age , if there was ever any such , or ...
Page 23
... understanding of the character of the two passages and the relation be- tween them both determines and is determined by our idea of pastoral . Theocritus's passage is full of lovely symmetries . Each speech begins with two lines ...
... understanding of the character of the two passages and the relation be- tween them both determines and is determined by our idea of pastoral . Theocritus's passage is full of lovely symmetries . Each speech begins with two lines ...
Page 27
... understand the place of landscape in pastoral . However much we argue ( as I shall in a moment ) that Romantic poetics has caused us to exaggerate the importance of idealized nature , it is still the case that certain representations of ...
... understand the place of landscape in pastoral . However much we argue ( as I shall in a moment ) that Romantic poetics has caused us to exaggerate the importance of idealized nature , it is still the case that certain representations of ...
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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