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E-book
Author Goodridge, John, 1953-

Title Rural life in eighteenth-century English poetry / John Goodridge
Published Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, ©1995

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 227 pages)
Series Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 27
Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 27.
Contents 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
Summary 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
Analysis English poetry
English poetry
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-221) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Virgil -- Influence
SUBJECT Virgil fast
Subject 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.
POETRY -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Agricultural laborers in literature
Agriculture in literature
Country life in literature
English poetry
English poetry -- Roman influences
Farm life in literature
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Literature and society
Pastoral poetry, English
Rural conditions in literature
Great Britain
Genre/Form Electronic books
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0585268959
9780585268958
0511584903
9780511584909
0511000278
9780511000270