Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry

This book examines the role of rural poetry, and self-taught poets, in eighteenth-century literary culture.

John Goodridge (Author)

9780521604321, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 December 2005

244 pages
22.9 x 15.4 x 1.5 cm, 0.371 kg

'Although this is a book which is specialised, it is of much interest and importance to those studying rural poetry, rural labour history or agricultural history.' John Clare Society Journal

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.

Introduction
Part 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
Part II. 'A Pastoral Convention and a Ruminative Mind': Agricultural Prescription In The Fleece: 6. Sheep and poetry
7. 'Soil and clime'
8. Environment and heredity
9. The care of sheep
10. The shepherd's harvest
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]