This expansive edited collection explores in depth the georgic genre and its connections to the natural world. Together, its chapters demonstrate that georgic—a genre based primarily on two classical poems about farming, Virgil’s Georgics and Hesiod’s Works and Days—has been reworked by writers throughout modern and early modern English-language literary history as a way of thinking about humans’ relationships with the environment.
The book is divided into three sections: Defining Georgic, Managing Nature and Eco-Georgic for the Anthropocene. It centres the georgic genre in the ecocritical conversation, giving it equal prominence with pastoral, elegy and lyric as an example of ‘nature writing’ that can speak to urgent environmental questions throughout literary history and up to the present day. It provides an overview of the myriad ways georgic has been reworked in order to address human relationships with the environment, through focused case studies on individual texts and authors, including James Grainger, William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Judith Wright and Rachel Blau DuPlessis.
This is a much-needed volume for literary critics, academics and students engaged in ecocritical studies, environmental humanities and literature, addressing a significantly overlooked environmental literary genre.
Author(s): Sue Edney, Tess Somervell
Series: Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media
Publisher: Routledge/Earthscan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 267
City: London
Cover
Endorsement
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Works Cited
Part I Defining Georgic
1 What Is Georgic’s Relation to Pastoral?
Works Cited
2 How Is Walden Georgic?
Works Cited
3 Middlemarch and the Georgic Novel
Works Cited
Part II Managing Nature
4 Agrilogistics and Pest Control in Early Modern Georgic
Weaponising Virgil: Epic Georgic and Inter-Species Warfare
Pest Control and Agrarian Magic: Rhyming Rats to Death
Notes
Works Cited
5 James Grainger’s The Sugar-Cane and Naturalists’ Georgic
James Grainger, The Sugar-Cane, and Natural History
The Sugar-Cane as a Naturalist’s Georgic
Naturalists’ Georgic Beyond The Sugar-Cane
Works Cited
6 Rural Frances Burney
Frances (Fanny) Burney: Urban Burney
Mme D’Arblay (Frances Burney D’Arblay): Rural Burney
Works Cited
7 Wordsworth’s Tidal Georgic
Note
Works Cited
8 Wordsworth’s ‘Michael’ and the Imperilled Georgic: Questions of Agricultural Permanence
Georgic Storytelling: Wordsworth’s Exigence and Technique
Labouring Honourably: Seeing Michael Clearly
Conclusion
Works Cited
9 Georgic Culture in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native: Participant Observation
The Return of the Native
The Philosopher as Labourer
Pastoral and Georgic
Hardy’s Georgic Culture
Works Cited
Part III Eco-Georgic for the Anthropocene
10 Georgic Hope in Robert Bloomfield and John Clare
Robert Bloomfield’s Stewardship
John Clare and Playful Employment
Works Cited
11 Seamus Heaney’s Elegiac and Domestic Georgics
Elegiac Georgics
Domestic Georgics
Acknowledgements
Works Cited
12 The Semi-Georgic Australian Sugarcane Novel
McKie
Devanny
Naish
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Works Cited
13 Judith Wright and Virgil’s Third Georgic
Horses
Dogs
Snakes
Plague
Conclusions
Works Cited
14 Derek Jarman’s Gay Georgic
Three Kinds of ‘No Future’
The Garden
Modern Nature
The Garden at Prospect Cottage
Acknowledgements
Note
Works Cited
15 Georgic Reversals in Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ Days and Works
Days and Dailiness
Works, What Works?
Fabular Detournement
Acknowledgements
Works Cited
Afterword
Work Cited
Index
