description: Recent research into a self-taught tradition of English rural poetry has radically changed our view of the role of poetry in the literary culture of the eighteenth century. Here John Goodridge compares poetic accounts of rural labor by James Thomson, Stephen Duck and Mary Collier, and makes a close analysis of John Dyer's The Fleece. Goodridge goes on to explore the purpose of rural poetry and how it relates to the real world, and reveals an illuminating link between rural poetry and agricultural and folkloric developments of the time.
language: English
title: Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry
titlecomplete: Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought, Series Number 27)
series: Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought
publisher: Cambridge University Press