A discussion of Empson’s 1935 classic Some Versions of Pastoral will be followed by two roundtables of 10-12 minute presentations, with ample time for discussion. Some copies of Empson’s book are available; please contact Lesley Lundeen in April.
Participants: Toby Altman (Michigan State U), Jayme Collins (Kaplan), Kathryn Crim (U Chicago), Sarah Dimick, Susannah Gottlieb, Laurie Shannon, Will West, Ivy Wilson, Tristram Wolff
Against a sense of pastoral as mainly archaic, this symposium asks whether its time has come (again). Historically, the pastoral is a Western literary tradition that came to paint a vivid picture of nature’s green spaces and the laboring poor, but generally for an educated urban audience. Hence Empson’s formula that it was about, but not by or for, the people it represents; we now might add that it was never by or for the creatures and landscapes it represented, either. At the same time, pastoral has served as a vehicle for both moral critique and utopian desires. Sometimes called a literary “mode,” rather than a genre, the pastoral produces a number of portable conventions across poetry, prose, and drama — bearing on things like work and leisure, love and sex, natural rights, the shape of time, political power and its abuses — that have been quietly yet decisively influential for social, religious, and political thought.
The open-ended aim of this symposium is to discuss what remains and what changes for the pastoral across a range of periods, authors, and genres. A more speculative goal is to evaluate the pastoral’s potential affordances under our new climate reality, since some of its premises are now under pressure from seasonal and other disruptions due to climate chaos.
Cost: Free.
English Department
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