English Pastoral

[Amor de Cosmos]

Or evocative rural writing from anywhere else, though it seems to be a genre/approach that has more of a tradition in the UK. There've been a couple of suggestions in response to George Borrow's work, on the other thread and I'd be interested in hearing of more.

Some favourites/classics:

Lark Rise to Candleford. I know it's been turned into a naffish TV series but Flora Thompson's original memoir about village life is stunning.

The opening chapter of John Fowles's Daniel Martin. The golden evocation of a harvest is utterly at odds with the rest of the book (which is pretty forgettable really.)

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn From Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows. Tranquility, fear, and faith combine, as Mole and Rat search for young Portly Otter on a Summer night. One of finest pieces of writing in the English language I reckon, from the last century at least.

Any other essentials? I guess most of Thomas Hardy's a gimme.

[Jon]

English Pastoral

Some great suggestions, adc.

George Eliot's Adam bede sprang to my mind, although I'm sure you've probably read it already.

'A country story, full of the breath of cows and scent of hay' was how Eliot herself described it.

And I've not read it but, from what I know about it, cider with rosie seems to fit the bill too.

[laverte]

English Pastoral

I'm never sure what "pastoral" means in literary terms. "Evocative rural writing" is an interesting category in itself, but to my mind it's not quite the same thing. What part in the story should the setting play? Early pastoral works (Piers Plowman, some of the mystery plays) evoke rural life in form as much as content; they seek, perhaps, to emulate its rhythms and conventions in the telling of stories. The victorian novel, on the other hand, was a thoroughly bourgeois form; the books mentioned so far are elegies for a lost heritage, mythologised and written at arm's length by and for the new urbanites. John Cowper Powys, for example, wrote the first part of his Wessex trilogy while living in Greenwich Village in New York.

Cowper Powys's pastoral novels are probably closer to Tolkein than they are to George Eliot. Can fantasy (Tolkein) or historical (Walter Scott) writers be considered pastoral? From the Romantics onward, the very notion of The Land is primarily a metaphor; it is spiritualised, paganised, othered, and increasingly experienced as Gothic. The literature that is known as 'American pastoral' is, to me, inseparable from Southern Gothic — Faulkner, Willa Cather, Ellen Glasgow, etc. To put it into English terms, could we say that the Brontės, DH Lawrence, Daphne Du Maurier were examples of "evocative rural writing"?

An interesting, more recent case is the Into their labours trilogy by John Berger. I've only read the first part, Pig earth. He's trying to tie together the social(ist) realism of the kitchen-sink novel with the pre-bourgeois pastoral tradition, using forms that are in a sort of confrontational harmony with the time spirals of rural life. Emphasising work both as a dirty, dangerous burden and as emancipation, it's the most English of novels, very much indebted to William Morris (who, like Berger, was from that profoundly rural part of the world known as Walthamstow). Naturally, it's set in Savoy and all the characters are French!

[Tubby Isaacs]

English Pastoral

Pig Earth?

That sounds like one of those books that would have been sent to the vanity publisher in The Information.

But it's an interesting idea. The countryside can be very hard indeed, no doubt.

[laverte]

English Pastoral

Tubby Isaacs wrote: Pig Earth?

That sounds like one of those books that would have been sent to the vanity publisher in The Information.

It quite often reads like one, too. The writing is very profane, much concerned with sweat, blood, piss, shit, muck, fucking, milking and death. Prose is interspersed with poetry and sketches, and the plot, such as it is, is driven by the exigencies of rural labour more than by anything so flimsy as character or intrigue. It is, to a very great degree, ridiculous. Either that, or we are — we, the genteel bourgeois reader.

[Lucia Lanigan]

English Pastoral

I started in on Berger's Booker-winning G and soon binned it. No drop-tops or gin and juice anywhere, it's rubbish. (Seriously, though, I find his style too declamatory to work as fiction. He's a real pronouncer, in that annoying Martin Amis manner. Empty bluster, I say.)

You know, I'm struggling to think of any pastoral English fiction that's floated my boat. I quite like all the '"Arr", said the moron' stuff in Waugh's Scoop, even though it's basically my family he's taking the piss out of. And I like Huysman's stereotypes in En Rade, more blunt hicks seen through the horrified eyes of a city slicker. Perhaps I hate the countryside.

Amor's not overstating how great Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is, though. It's a pretty strong piece of music writing too.

[Amor de Cosmos]

English Pastoral

I'm never sure what "pastoral" means in literary terms. "Evocative rural writing" is an interesting category in itself, but to my mind it's not quite the same thing.

I'm not totally sure myself. I can locate it more precisely in visual than literary terms. It's Samuel Palmer, not Constable, but 'Rupert' not Rackham. Certainly it's as Romantic as it is naturalistic. Though, perhaps paradoxically, prosaic courtroom accounts of church 'ales' and the mischiefs of morris-men can evoke similar feelings.

Your story about Cowper Powys resonates. It's a distanced appreciation of place — at worst nostalgia, at best personal mythos I suppose. On the very rare occasions I miss England it's in this way. For instance it was through reading Syd Barrett's early life, and it's close parallels with my own, that I returned to Wind in the Willows, and found a different book than the one I remembered from childhood.

[Jon]

English Pastoral

"The literature that is known as 'American pastoral' is, to me, inseparable from Southern Gothic — Faulkner, Willa Cather, Ellen Glasgow.


Cather did have connections with the South and set one novel in New Mexico and another in Virginia. But when I think of her, indeed if asked to think of an American rural setting, I always think of the Mid-west.

Nature writers can be good at "evocative rural writing" too, obviously. My dad, whom I mentioned on the Current reading thread as a Borrow completist, would recommend Richard Jeffries' Bevis books for children. A period piece and by all accounts, a bit like a British Tom Sawyer, but he says the descriptions of the natural world are excellent. W H Hudson's A Shepherd's Life is another recommendation of his.

[Amor de Cosmos]

English Pastoral

Is your Dad's interest in the nature or literary aspect of the story, or some combination of both? When I was a kid, I read several books in — I think — the "Romany Series." I wonder if he's familiar with them?

[Jon]

English Pastoral

Oh yes, the Romany series - he has the lot. Or 'Romany of the BBC', as some of the dustcovers proclaim. I haven't read any of them myself but I did dip into his biography.

"Is your Dad's interest in the nature or literary aspect of the story, or some combination of both?"

I've never thought to ask him, but I'd hazard a guess it's more of the former than the latter. He's always read much more non-fiction than fiction. And he was a keen amateur naturalist in his youth, mainly interested in birds, so these books are mostly ones that he read as an adolescent and they have obviously left their mark on him. And now, with the help of abebooks, I can track down books he owned as a youth or fill in the gaps of a series like Romany.

[Tubby Isaacs]

English Pastoral

This looks good. In Our Time programme about pastoral.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003c1cs

[Amor de Cosmos]

English Pastoral

That looks great. Unfortunately I can't play it because it "contains invalid data." (?)

[Tubby Isaacs]

English Pastoral

Works OK for me. Is it because you're abroad?

Well, next time you come over, we'll all get together and listen.

[Amor de Cosmos]

English Pastoral

Dunno, usually I get a "not available in your area" message when that's the case.

Getting together would be good, though there's no immediate plans to visit I'm afraid.

[Mumpo]

English Pastoral

Amor de Cosmos wrote:
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn From Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows. Tranquility, fear, and faith combine, as Mole and Rat search for young Portly Otter on a Summer night. One of finest pieces of writing in the English language I reckon, from the last century at least

The Little Grey Men books by Denys 'BB' Watkins-Pitchford are very much in the same vein, even down to an encounter with Pan. Blissfully good reading, with rich, evocative descriptions of British flora and fauna dripping from every page like tea from an urn.

[VTTBoscombe]

English Pastoral

If by English pastoral it is means country folk acting as such, with loamy bits under their finger nails - I always thought Thomas Hardy managed that pretty well.

"OK you inflated sheep - here comes that nice Mr Oakes".

[Tubby Isaacs]

English Pastoral

Shame you won't be over, Amor.

How about I listen and give you the benefit of "lecture notes"?

[Amor de Cosmos]

English Pastoral

Ha! You can do that if you want. Or you could wait until I am over, most likely some time next year.

I always thought Thomas Hardy managed that pretty well.

Yes, as mentioned up top, he's probably the first one that leaps to mind.

The Little Grey Men books by Denys 'BB' Watkins-Pitchford are very much in the same vein, even down to an encounter with Pan. Blissfully good reading, with rich, evocative descriptions of British flora and fauna dripping from every page like tea from an urn

Good lord, I've never heard of him. Remarkable considering how prolific he was during my childhood. I must investigate further.

[Nefertiti2]

English Pastoral

I like Into Their labours - One of the stories the three Lives of Lucie Cabrol" was adapted for the theatre in a quite brilliant production by Complicitee if anyone saw that. Once in Europa is also very good i thought.

English pastoral has a darker side, too. Tarka the Otter was very powerful when i read it as a child . Its author was a supporter of Oswald Mosley. And (I read) a big influence on BB, of whom I'd second Mumpo's endorsement.

Kipling of course belongs to this list. Puck of Pooks Hill and Rewards and Fairies. And Some of his short stories are magnificent examples of that darker english pastoral

read They for example.

This strand is continued in Ted Hughes of course

Also (though technically Welsh) worth a read is Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill. And Akenfield though it's more scoial history than pastoral.

[Benjm]

English Pastoral

Edward Thomas deserves a mention here, his beautifully precise descriptions of the countryside shadowed by the First World War, as mentioned in the work and also in our knowledge of the poet's death on the Western Front.

[Edie St Pierre]

English Pastoral

I've been reading a lot of immediately pre-WW1 literature recently ('A Shropshire Lad' by A.E. Houseman, early PG Wodehouse stories, 'Grantchester' by Rupert Brooke and what-have-you) and they're full of evocative Edwardian English landscape in Summertime.

There's a Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine) novel called 'Dark Adapted Eye' that's got some brilliant descriptions of the English countryside from a childs point of view.

'Coming Up For Air' by George Orwell too, come to think of it, and pretty much everything John Betjeman ever wrote.

[Jon]

English Pastoral

I finished Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song over the summer. A quite complex and difficult novel but highly enjoyable nonetheless. The writing is, on the whole, excellent. A real tragedy that he died at such a young age - 33, I think.

But what I took above all from the novel were his evocative, lyrical and emotive descriptions of the Southern Aberdeenshire landscape. After reading the book, I was therefore really keen to see the Terence Davies film which came out last year. I know he's been a fan of the novel since he saw the BBC Scotland adaptation back in the 70s and had been trying to get it made into a film for well over a decade. Visually stunning though it is, I couldn't help but think that the landscape from the film didn't chime in with the landscape being described in the book. At the end of the film I found that the majority of the sweeping landscapes were filmed in - you guessed it - New Zealand. Disappointing - for me at least - but I guess I'll just have to go and visit them myself instead.

As to whether it is a truly 'pastoral' book, I think you could argue it is. Although one of the novel's themes is the progress of modern technology, it is also an elegy to the old Scottish farming ways that the writer would have known so well, having been brought up in a very similar community to the one he was writing about.