What Is Pastoral? (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith) - Softcover

Alpers, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226015173 ISBN 13: 9780226015170

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1997

Synopsis

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

About this title

Synopsis:

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.

About the Author:

Paul Alpers is the Class of 1942 Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0226015173
• ISBN 13: 9780226015170
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 444