What Is Pastoral?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 |
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Page xi
... whole enterprise of literature . A book of this sort is not the occasion for debating these central principles . It does not even provide the opportunity for addressing some questions of literary history for which a just view of ...
... whole enterprise of literature . A book of this sort is not the occasion for debating these central principles . It does not even provide the opportunity for addressing some questions of literary history for which a just view of ...
Page 10
... whole of poetry inevitably emphasizes what it consid- ers the major forms . Given this bias , it is not surprising that much Renaissance criticism of pastoral occurs in prologues or prefaces to pastoral works — where , in effect , the ...
... whole of poetry inevitably emphasizes what it consid- ers the major forms . Given this bias , it is not surprising that much Renaissance criticism of pastoral occurs in prologues or prefaces to pastoral works — where , in effect , the ...
Page 14
... whole fields of study or types of discourse , which we can generate by pursuing the details of these anecdotes , spelling them out , as it were . Burke claims that a representative anecdote is the foundation of every theoretical ...
... whole fields of study or types of discourse , which we can generate by pursuing the details of these anecdotes , spelling them out , as it were . Burke claims that a representative anecdote is the foundation of every theoretical ...
Page 19
... his predecessors , in the editorial as- sertion that " Wordsworth stresses the unreality of Shakespeare's pastoral world . " In the 1805 Prelude the point of the whole passage Representative Anecdotes and Ideas of Pastoral 19.
... his predecessors , in the editorial as- sertion that " Wordsworth stresses the unreality of Shakespeare's pastoral world . " In the 1805 Prelude the point of the whole passage Representative Anecdotes and Ideas of Pastoral 19.
Page 20
Paul Alpers. In the 1805 Prelude the point of the whole passage is that traditional pastoral falsely represents the life of shepherds as Wordsworth knew it . In Burke's terms , the anecdotes do not provide an adequate descriptive termi ...
Paul Alpers. In the 1805 Prelude the point of the whole passage is that traditional pastoral falsely represents the life of shepherds as Wordsworth knew it . In Burke's terms , the anecdotes do not provide an adequate descriptive termi ...
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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