Poetics and Politics of Place in Pastoral

This book offers new essays on the pastoral tradition. Both critical revision and consideration of pastoral's future, Poetics and Politics of Place in Pastoral: International Perspectives investigates the genre's persistent attraction in a time of environmental crisis.

In a time of global environmental crisis, pastoralism may seem beside the point. Yet pastoral ideals are still alive even though they often manifest themselves by ironic indirection. What can the pastoral tradition teach us about our ties to particular places? The contributors to this volume attempt to lay the groundwork for the ongoing concern with pastoral and with its critical revision. This volume brings together new essays that focus on painting, photography, poetry, essay, fiction and film, from the Renaissance to the present. They also take into account an astonishing variety of pastoral places, in Europe, Africa, and North America; country and city; suburbia and industrial zones. Poetics and Politics of Place in Pastoral is not only about reassessing the past, but also provides a sense of future developments as the pastoral reinvents itself for the 21st century.

Autorentext

Bénédicte Chorier-Fryd and Charles Holdefer teach English at the University of Poitiers. Both specialize in contemporary American fiction. Holdefer is also a published novelist. Thomas Pughe teaches English at the University of Orléans. His main field is ecocriticism. The editors are founding members of a research team on the pastoral that brings together scholars from various French universities.

Inhalt

Contents: Andy Auckbur: take that goodness in hand: The Representation of Nature and the Power of Beauty in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia - Fabien Desset: From The Cimmerian Ravines of Modern Cities to the Upaithric Temples of Pastoral Greece: The Place of Nature in Shelley's Ancient Ruins - Mathilde Arriv: From Wild West to Mild West: Photographic Eclogues of the Indian West in the Post-Frontier Era - Nancy Wolsk: Rosa Bonheur: Pastoral Visions - Amy Wells: A City Girl's Pastoral Playground: A Geocritical Approach to Gendered Arcadia in Anas Nin's Cities of the Interior - Aurore Clavier: The Savage's Romance: The Culture of Pastoral in the Poetry of Marianne Moore - Andrew McKeown: A Pastoral Place in Language? The poems of Edward Thomas - Bndicte Chorier-Fryd: The Pasture and the Freeway in Thomas Pynchon's California - Idom Inyabri: Joe Ushie's Pastoral Vision in Popular Stand and Hill Songs - Thomas Pughe: Pastoralism, Poetics and Politics in Three Texts by Rick Bass from the 1990s - Franois Specq: Walking in the Greater Garden: Thoreau and the Pastoral Ideal - Aurlie Griffin: The Quest for Arcadia in Philip Sidney's Arcadia(s) and Mary Wroth's Urania - Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet: Pastoral Motifs in British Social-realist Cinema: Illusions and Disillusions in the Quest for a locus amoenus - Laetitia Sansonetti: Knights among shepherds: courtly pastorals in Spenser's Faerie Queene (1596) - Charles Holdefer: Machines at Work and Play: George Saunders and the Post-Pastoral.