200 pages

English

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What Else Is Pastoral? , livre ebook

Cornell University Press - Ken Hiltner

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200 pages

English

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Pastoral was one of the most popular literary forms of early modern England. Inspired by classical and Italian Renaissance antecedents, writers from Ben Jonson to John Beaumont and Abraham Cowley wrote in idealized terms about the English countryside. It is often argued that the Renaissance pastoral was a highly figurative mode of writing that had more to do with culture and politics than with the actual countryside of England. For decades now literary criticism has had it that in pastoral verse, hills and crags and moors were extolled for their metaphoric worth, rather than for their own qualities. In What Else Is Pastoral?, Ken Hiltner takes a fresh look at pastoral, offering an environmentally minded reading that reconnects the poems with literal landscapes, not just figurative ones.Considering the pastoral in literature from Virgil and Petrarch to Jonson and Milton, Hiltner proposes a new ecocritical approach to these texts. We only become truly aware of our environment, he explains, when its survival is threatened. As London expanded rapidly during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the city and surrounding rural landscapes began to look markedly different. Hiltner finds that Renaissance writers were acutely aware that the countryside they had known was being lost to air pollution, deforestation, and changing patterns of land use; their works suggest this new absence of nature through their appreciation for the scraps that remained in memory or in fact. A much-needed corrective to the prevailing interpretation of pastoral poetry, What Else Is Pastoral? shows the value of reading literature with an ecological eye.

Sujets

Idioma inglés

Reino Unido

Ireland

United Kingdom

English

Stephen Ireland

Great Britain

Anglais

Royaume-Uni

Informations

Publié par	Cornell University Press
Date de parution	18 mars 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780801460760
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,7500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

What Else Is Pastoral?

Renaissance Literature and the Environment

Ken Hiltner

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2011 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Hiltner, Ken. What else is pastoral? : Renaissance literature and the environment / Ken Hiltner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9780801449406 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. 2. Pastoral literature, English—History and criticism. 3. Nature in literature. 4. Ecology in literature. I. Title. PR418.P3H55 2011 820.9'358209734—dc22 2010044420

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood ﬁbers. For further information, visit our website at www. cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

For Talya

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. Literary Issues

1. The Nature of Art

2. What Else Is Pastoral?

Contents

3. What Else Was Pastoral in the Renaissance?

4. Pastoral and Ideology, and the Environment

Part II. Environmental Problems

5. Representing Air Pollution in Early Modern London

6. Environmental Protest Literature of the Renaissance

7. Empire, the Environment, and the Growth of Georgic

Select Bibliography Index

19 34 49 67

95 125 156

175 187

Acknowledgments

I owe so many debts of thanks that it is difﬁcult to know where to begin, other than to acknowledge that such generosity can never be adequately repaid. First, special thanks are due Barbara Lewalski. Without her kind, patient, and generous support and guidance, which involved reading seem ingly endless revisions of this material, this book would never have come into being. I owe a similar debt to Gordon Teskey, who helped me work through the theoretical underpinnings of my approach, often during long and pleasant bike rides, and to Stephen Greenblatt, who patiently and re peatedly offered invaluable help and support along the way. I also owe thanks to many members of the faculty at Harvard University. Among them, Elaine Scarry, Jim Engel, and Marge Garber certainly deserve spe cial note. The book also beneﬁted enormously from suggestions made by Rob Watson, Angus Fletcher, John Rumrich, and Peter Potter. I also want to thank my mother Caroline and my brother Harry, as my fascination with the environment began many years ago on our fam ily’s farm. Finally, my wife, Talya Meyers, who read a second round of