Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry

✍ Scribed by John Goodridge

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 244
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Recent research into a self-taught tradition of English rural poetry has radically changed our view of the role of poetry in the literary culture of the eighteenth century. Here John Goodridge compares poetic accounts of rural labor by James Thomson, Stephen Duck and Mary Collier, and makes a close analysis of John Dyer's The Fleece. Goodridge goes on to explore the purpose of rural poetry and how it relates to the real world, and reveals an illuminating link between rural poetry and agricultural and folkloric developments of the time.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 6
Copyright......Page 7
Contents......Page 10
Preface......Page 12
Abbreviations, conventions, textual note......Page 14
Introduction......Page 16
Part I. ‘Hard labour we most chearfully pursue’: three poets on rural work......Page 24
1. Thomson, Duck, Collier and rural realism......Page 26
2. Initiations and peak times......Page 38
3. Three types of labour......Page 59
4. Compensations......Page 73
5. Homecomings......Page 86
Part II. ‘A pastoral convention and a ruminative mind’: agricultural prescription in The Fleece, I......Page 104
6. Sheep and poetry......Page 106
7. ‘Soil and clime’......Page 118
8. Environment and heredity......Page 140
9. The care of sheep......Page 159
10. The shepherd's harvest......Page 182
Appendix A. ‘Siluria’......Page 196
Appendix B. Eighteenth-century sheep breeds......Page 198
Notes......Page 203
Select bibliography......Page 225
Index......Page 237
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLSH LITERATURE AND THOUGHT......Page 243