Pastoral

Terry Gifford offers a clear and invaluable introduction to 'pastoral', clarifying its uses and tracing the history of the genre from its classical origins through to contemporary writing. This guidebook provides: • clarification of the different definitions of pastoral • introduction to the major arguments about the form • identification and close reading of key texts - including classical poetry, Elizabethan drama, the pastoral poetry of Pope, Wordsworth and Clare, and contemporary poetry, fiction and travel writing • an examination of the anti-pastoral tradition • a discussion of 'post-pastoral' texts