Description

In this work, the 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 aims to bring the story of the pastoral tradition, previously limited to classical and Renaissance literature, into the 20th century. Pastoral re-emerges 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.

What Is Pastoral?

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Paperback / softback by Paul Alpers

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In this work, the literary historian, Paul Alpers, argues that pastoral is based upon a fundamental fiction - that the... Read more

    Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
    Publication Date: 01/06/1997
    ISBN13: 9780226015170, 978-0226015170
    ISBN10: 0226015173

    Number of Pages: 444

    Non Fiction , ELT & Literary Studies , Education

    Description

    In this work, the 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 aims to bring the story of the pastoral tradition, previously limited to classical and Renaissance literature, into the 20th century. Pastoral re-emerges 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.

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