The Writing of Rural England 1500-1800 documents and contextualizes the conflicting representations of rural life during a crucial period of social, economic and cultural change. It highlights the dialogues and tensions between agriculture and aesthetics, economics and morality, men and women, leisure and labour. By drawing on both canonical and marginal texts, it argues that early-modern writing not only reflected but played a part in constructing the cultural meanings of the English countryside with which we continue to live.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Acknowledgements Feudalism and Beyond: The Anxiety of Change The Discovery of Landscape The Country House Merry England: Property, Pastoral and Rural Pleasures The Georgic Imperative: Labour, Thrift, Improvement Property and Oppression: Voices from the Margins Gardens: Public and Private Pleasures
