Title: God speed the plough
First published: 1996
Description: This book presents a fresh view of crucial processes of change, offering through an inter-disciplinary analysis new insights into both the history and the literature of the land in early modern England.

In the period 1500 to 1660 the practices and values of rural England were exposed to unprecedented challenges. Within this context a wide variety of commentators examined and debated the changing conditions, a process documented in the pages of sermons, pamphlets, satiric verse and drama, husbandry and surveying manuals, chorographical tracts and rural poetry.

The analysis of these text in God speed the plough explores changing patterns of representation. The book argues that important movements revised preexistent assumptions about agrarian England and shaped bold new appreciations of rural life. While Tudor moralists responded to social crises by asserting ideals of rural stability and community, by the seventeenth century a discourse of improvement promoted vitally divergent notions of thrift and property.
Subjects: Agriculture, Agriculture in literature, Country life in literature, English Pastoral literature, English literature, Farm life in literature, Historiography, History, History and criticism, In literature, Literature and society, Pastoral literature, English, Rural conditions in literature, Agriculture, history, Great britain, rural conditions, English literature, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700, Pastoral literature, history and criticism, Agriculture, great britain, history
Places: England
Time periods: 16th century, 17th century, Early modern, 1500-1700
LC classification: PR428.P36 M38 1996