A history of English georgic writing / edited by Paddy Bullard, University of Reading.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bullard, Paddy, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Virgil. Georgica--Influence.

Virgil.

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Farm life in literature.

Agriculture in literature.

Genre:

Essays

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 387 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

The interconnected themes of land and labour were a common recourse for English literary writers between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and in the twenty-first they have become pressing again in the work of nature writers, environmentalists, poets, novelists and dramatists. Written by a team of sixteen subject specialists, this volume surveys the literature of rural working lives and landscapes written in English between 1500 and the present day, offering a range of scholarly perspectives on the georgic tradition, with insights from literary criticism, historical scholarship, classics, post-colonial studies, rural studies and ecocriticism. Providing an overview of the current scholarship in georgic literature and criticism, this collection argues that the work of people and animals in farming communities, and the land as it is understood through that work, has provided writers in English with one of their most complex and enduring themes.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title page

Title page

Copyright page

Contents

List of Contributors

A Note on National Designations

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: A Survey of English Georgic Writing, 1521-2021

Three Modern Georgic Snapshots

The Sixteenth Century

The Seventeenth Century

The Eighteenth Century

The Romantic and Victorian Periods

The Twentieth Century

The Twenty-First Century

Notes

Part I Turnings

Chapter 1 Hesiod, Virgil and the Ambitions of Georgic

Greek Georgic Writing

The Works and Days of Hesiod

The Roman Georgic Tradition

The Georgics of Virgil

Chapter 2 Turning, Flying: The Rural Year

Labours

Hundreds of Points

Pauses, Pivots, Culminations

Lucky Days

Spring to Spring

Chapter 3 Farm Diaries, 1770-1990

What Is a Farm Diary?

Farm Diaries, Work and Landscape

Work

Landscape

Conclusion

Chapter 4 Twentieth-Century Georgic and Agricultural Technology

Textbooks and Surveys

Memoirs and Novels Written before the Second World War

Wartime and Post-War Georgic

Conclusions

Part II Times

Chapter 5 Jacobean Georgic

Making Sense of Renaissance Georgic

The Georgic Debates of Jacobean England

Jacobean Georgics: Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton

Chapter 6 'Varieties too Regular for Chance': John Evelyn, John Dryden and Their Contemporaries

Marvell's Militarized Georgics

Evelyn, Cowley and Early Restoration Georgic

Is Paradise Georgic?

Translating the Georgics at the Turn of the Century

Chapter 7 Enlightenment, Improvement and Experimentation: Jethro Tull and His Contemporaries

'Answerable Style'

'Labor Omnia Vicit': Georgic Labour

Miscellaneity and Georgic Variety

The Muse of Sage Experience: From Experience to Experiment.

Feeling Georgic: The Pleasures of Agriculture

Chapter 8 Georgic, Romanticism and Complaint: John Clare and His Contemporaries

The Roots of Rural Complaint

Complaint in the Romantic Formal Georgic

Beachy Head and Georgic Complaint

Chapter 9 Rural Labour in an Age of Industry: William Cobbett and Some Contemporaries

Chapter 10 Labour Isn't Working: The (F)ailing Georgics of Hardy's Wessex Novels

High-Pressure Agriculture

What Makes a Man of Character?

Reading the Leaves

The Demise of Autumn's Very Brother

A Gentle Conjuror's Touch?

Arboreal Anxieties

Chapter 11 Twentieth-Century Georgic: V. Sackville-West

Figures of Virgilian Genres

Vernacular Georgic

Farm and Form

'Playing the Farmer'

Native and Foreign

Languages

Campaigns of the Imagination

Chapter 12 Rags and Tatters: Hughes, Oswald and Their Contemporaries

Rags and Tatters

Weights and Checks

Clippings and Tags

Part III Territories

Chapter 13 Low Lands: Fen Georgic

John Clare and the Fen Sky

'The Powte's Complaint' and Fen Flood

Waterland and Fen Bodies

The Wake and Fen Depths

Chapter 14 Between the Georgic and the Pastoral: The British Weald

The Sound of the Scythe against the Whetstone

'Pigeon-Holed Finally as One Who Describes the Country'

Lovers of Unwrecked England

'We Are Nearly Home Now. The Sheep Can Sense It'

Chapter 15 American Georgic

From American Pastoral to American Georgic

The End of the Rope: Virginia Georgics

The Threshing Floor

Chapter 16 Environment and Empire: Georgic through Time

Georgic Poetry as Archive

Georgic Visibility

Georgic Modernity

Bibliography

Select Primary Works

Select Secondary Works

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Dec 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781009022668

1009022660

9781009022415

1009022415

9781009019507

1009019503