Georgic Literature and the Environment Working Land, Reworking Genre

This expansive edited collection explores in depth the georgic genre and its connections to the natural world. Together, its chapters demonstrate that georgic—a genre based primarily on two classical poems about farming, Virgil’s Georgics and Hesiod’s Works and Days—has been reworked by writers throughout modern and early modern English-language literary history as a way of thinking about humans’ relationships with the environment. The book is divided into three sections: Defining Georgic, Managing Nature and Eco-Georgic for the Anthropocene. It centres the georgic genre in the ecocritical conversation, giving it equal prominence with pastoral, elegy and lyric as an example of ‘nature writing’ that can speak to urgent environmental questions throughout literary history and up to the present day. It provides an overview of the myriad ways georgic has been reworked in order to address human relationships with the environment, through focused case studies on individual texts and authors, including James Grainger, William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Judith Wright and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. This is a much-needed volume for literary critics, academics and students engaged in ecocritical studies, environmental humanities and literature, addressing a significantly overlooked environmental literary genre.

Foreword by David Fairer Introduction Sue Edney and Tess Somervell PART I Defining Georgic 1 What Is Georgic’s Relation to Pastoral? Terry Gifford 2 How Is Walden Georgic? Juan Christian Pellicer 3 Middlemarch and the Georgic Novel Henry Power PART II Managing Nature 4 Agrilogistics and Pest Control in Early Modern Georgic Todd Andrew Borlik 5 James Grainger’s The Sugar-Cane and Naturalists’ Georgic Brycchan Carey 6 Rural Frances Burney Barbara Witucki 7 Wordsworth’s Tidal Georgic Ralph Pite 8 Wordsworth’s ‘Michael’ and the Imperilled Georgic: Questions of Agricultural Permanence Ethan Mannon 9 Georgic Culture in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native: Participant Observation Philipp Erchinger PART III Eco-Georgic for the Anthropocene 10 Georgic Hope in Robert Bloomfield and John Clare Sue Edney 11 Seamus Heaney’s Elegiac and Domestic Georgics Shun LU 12 The Semi-Georgic Australian Sugarcane Novel Elizabeth A. Smyth 13 Judith Wright and Virgil’s Third Georgic Sarah Lawrence 14 Derek Jarman’s Gay Georgic Greg Garrard 15 Georgic Reversals in Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ Days and Works Harriet Tarlo Afterword Sue Edney and Tess Somervell

Sue Edney is a lecturer in English at Bristol University, UK, the Reviews Editor for Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism and the ecocriticism representative on the steering committee of the International Ecolinguistics Association. Tess Somervell is Lecturer in English at Worcester College, University of Oxford, UK, and previously held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Leeds.