Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought, Series Number 27)

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. 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 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.