Changing Landscapes

Anti-Pastoral Sentiment in the English Renaissance

Title Details

Pages: 248

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 09/01/2016

ISBN: 9-780-8203-3987-0

List Price: $29.95

Changing Landscapes

Anti-Pastoral Sentiment in the English Renaissance

Skip to

  • Description
  • Reviews
In Changing Landscapes, Peter Lindenbaum reveals the growing frustration of Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton, and other writers of their time with the ideal realm—the carefree Eden, the still-reigning Golden Age—that seemed to dominate pastoral poetry. Impelled by an awareness of human conflict with the world and of the forces that beleaguer from within, these writers proposed, in the guise of the pastoral, a vision of community, individual responsibility, and civic duty in a fallen world.
Lindenbaum locates the crisis of English pastoral in Protestant distrust of the contemplative life; in the fictions he considers, labor and love bring about new orders at the expense of old ones, or reveal the dynamics under the illusory facade of Arcadian stasis. In a sense Arcadia never really existed at all.

—South Atlantic Review

Lucidly, sometimes eloquently written, and judiciously argued.

—Renaissance Quarterly

Elegantly written . . . Lindenbaum's argument is a simple one ut nevertheless of considerable importance as to how we should interpret the pastoral landscape of the Arcadia, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, and Paradise Lost.

—Review of English Studies

His readings of Sidney, Shakespeare, and Milton are at once sensible and imaginative.

—Sewanee Review

About the Author/Editor

PETER LINDENBAUM (1938–2010) was a professor of English at Indiana University. He was founder of the Indiana University History of the Book and Renaissance Studies programs.