From Pastoral to Post-pastoral in British Nature Writing①

Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2018, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (1): 12-31.

• Chinese and Foreign Scholars on Nature Writing Studies • Previous Articles Next Articles

From Pastoral to Post-pastoral in British Nature Writing①

Terry Gifford

Online:2018-02-25 Published:2022-05-23
About author:Professor Terry Gifford, a co-founder of British ecocriticism, is Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University.(Newton Park,BA2 9BN,United Kingdom) His full CV, current projects and latest essays are at www.terrygifford.co.uk. Email: t.gifford2@bathspa.ac.uk

Abstract

Abstract: How did British nature writing come to take an environmentalist turn between 1960 and 1980? Nostalgic rural pastoralism was replaced by environmentally informed engagements with newly conceived dilemmas of land management, transforming writing about the countryside, such as that by H. V. Morton, to more problematic reflections and celebrations in, for example, J. A. Baker’s The Peregrine (1967). Parallel to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the US, there was a distinctively British reaction to industrial agriculture and the need for environmental protections that was reflected in all forms of nature writing. Richard Mabey’s post-pastoral book The Common Ground (1980) exemplified this shift in being informed by the latest science and having a conservationist purpose, whilst celebrating a public need for contact with nature that was recognised as aesthetic, spiritual, recreational, but also in danger of destroying traditional practices in landscapes that it valued.

Key words: post-pastoral, nature writing, Richard Mabey, Silent Spring, Ted Hughes

Terry Gifford. From Pastoral to Post-pastoral in British Nature Writing①[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2018, 40(1): 12-31.

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