Pastoral (The New Critical Idiom) - Softcover

Gifford, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415147336 ISBN 13: 9780415147330

Publisher: Routledge, 1999

Synopsis

Pastoral is a succinct and up-to-date introductory text to the history, major writers and critical issues of this genre. Terry Gifford clarifies the different uses of pastoral covering:

• the history of the genre from its classical origins to Elizabethan drama, through eighteenth-century pastoral poetry to contemporary American nature writing
• the pastoral impulse of retreat and return, beginning with constructions of Arcadia and using a combination of close reading of quoted texts, cultural studies and eco-criticism
• post-pastoral texts with a look at writers, who Gifford argues, have discovered ways of reconnecting us with our natural environment.

About this title

About the Author:

Terry Gifford is Research Co-ordinator at the School of English, Bretton Hall College of Leeds University. He is author of Green Voices: Understanding Contemporary Nature Poetry.

Review:

"It is time to evaluate the works of literature and the environment using Gifford's powerful terms."
-Christopher Kuipers," ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment
"The book is suggestive and the product of a reflective intelligence... [recommended] for comprehensive academic collections."
-"Choice, April 2000

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0415147336
• ISBN 13: 9780415147330
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208