What Is Pastoral?
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.58 (748 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226015165 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 444 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-11-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Alpers argues that the heart of literary pastoral is the representation of herdsmen and their lives. 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. Pastoral reemerges in this account not as a vehicle of nostalgia for some Golden Age, nor of escape to idyllic landscapes, but as a means of dealing with the loss, decline, and deprivation that motivate pastoral, and of maintaining a sense of human community despite these woes. Ranging from Virgil's Eclogues to Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Wordsworth, Hardy, and Frost, this work brings the story of the pastoral tradition, previously limited to classical and Renaissance
Christopher T Teggatz said What, indeed.?. Paul Alpers approaches one of the most complex questions in literary criticism. The text is a theoretical consideration of the epistemology of pastoral text as mode and genre. The study is highly rooted in traditional conceptions of pastoral, and his historical perspective of genre evolution is a bit myopic at times. Nevertheless Alpers is an excellent scholar of pastoral and his study is one of the best in the criticism
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