God Speed the Plough
The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660

An interdisciplinary analysis of the history and literature of the land in early modern England.

Andrew McRae (Author)

9780521524667, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 12 September 2002

352 pages, 13 b/w illus.
21.7 x 14 x 2.3 cm, 0.516 kg

"This important interdisciplinary work examines literary representations of the English rural landscape and its economy and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Andrew McRae's book differs from many contributions to the `new historicism' in literary criticism in its treatment of an impressive array of printed sources drawn from a variety of genres, a literature McRae explores to uncover the dynamics of an agrarian discourse." Dan Beaver, Albion

This book presents a fresh view of crucial processes of change, offering through an interdisciplinary analysis, fresh insights into both the history and literature of the land in early modern England. In the period 1500 to 1660 the practices and values of rural England were exposed to unprecedented challenges. Within this context a wide variety of commentators examined and debated the changing conditions, a process documented in the pages of sermons, pamphlets, satiric verse and drama, husbandry and surveying manuals, chorographical tracts, and rural poetry. The book argues that important movements revised assumptions about agrarian England, and shaped bold new appreciations of rural life. While Tudor moralists responded to social crises by asserting ideals of rural stability and community, by the seventeenth century a discourse of improvement promoted divergent notions of thrift and property.

Introduction
Part I. Versions of Moral Economy: 1. Covetousness in the countryside: agrarian complaint and mid-Tudor reform
2. Moral economics and the Tudor-Stuart Church
3. The rural vision of Renaissance satire
4. Agrarian communism
Part II. Imperatives of Improvement: 5. Husbandry manuals and agrarian improvement
6. 'To know one's own': the discourse of the estate surveyor
7. Georgic economics
Part III. The Profits and Pleasures of the Land: 8. Chorography: the view from the gentleman's seat
9. Rural poetics
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]