Rural life in eighteenth-century English poetry / / John Goodridge [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNISA996248117203316
• Autore: Goodridge John
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 1995
• ISBN: 0-511-09847-2; 0-511-58490-3; 0-511-00027-8
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xiv, 227 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Collana: Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; ; 27
• Disciplina: 821/.509321734
• Soggetti: English poetry - 18th century - History and criticism; Rural conditions in literature; Literature and society - Great Britain - History - 18th century; Pastoral poetry, English - History and criticism; Agricultural laborers in literature; English poetry - Roman influences; Country life in literature; Agriculture in literature; Farm life in literature
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-221) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: pt. I. 'Hard labour we most chearfully pursue': three poets on rural work. 1. Thomson, Duck, Collier and rural realism. 2. Initiations and peak times. 3. Three types of labour. 4. Compensations. 5. Homecomings -- pt. II. 'A pastoral convention and a ruminative mind': agricultural prescription in The Fleece, I. 6. Sheep and poetry. 7. 'Soil and clime'. 8. Environment and heredity. 9. The care of sheep. 10. The shepherd's harvest -- Appendix A 'Siluria' -- Appendix B Eighteenth-century sheep breeds.
• Sommario/riassunto: Recent research into a self-taught tradition of English rural poetry has begun to offer a radically new dimension to our view of the role of poetry in the literary culture of the eighteenth century. In this important ; new study John Goodridge offers a detailed reading of key rural poems of the period, examines the ways in which eighteenth-century poets adapted Virgilian Georgic models, and reveals an illuminating link between rural poetry and agricultural and folkloric developments. Goodridge compares poetic accounts of rural labour by James Thomson, Stephen Duck, and Mary Collier, and makes a close analysis of one of the largely forgotten didactic epics of the eighteenth century, John Dyer's The Fleece. Through an exploration of the purpose of rural poetry and how it relates to the real world, Goodridge breaks through the often brittle surface of eighteenth-century poetry, to show how it reflects the ideologies and realities of contemporary life.