The Manor, the Plowman, and the Shepherd: Agrarian Themes and Imagery in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance English Literature
- Author / Editor
- Hill, Ordelle G.
The Manor, the Plowman, and the Shepherd: Agrarian Themes and Imagery in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance English Literature
- Published
- Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press, 1993.
- Physical Description
- 257 pp.; ill.
- Description
- Traces the changing reception of the literary images of the plowman and the shepherd from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. In the fourteenth century, the plowman begins to shift from representing such values as hard work and thrift to appearing as a figure of discontent and shiftlessness.
- By contrast, the pastoral figure begins to gain in status and,by the sixteenth century, takes the plowman's place in literary prominence. Chapter 3 examines the literary responses to changing agrarian conditions as seen in Gower, Chaucer, and the poetic followers of Langland. Hill argues that Chaucer responds to agrarian themes by transforming and incorporating the learned classical tradition of Virgil's "Georgics" in CT.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Plowman and the Tale
- Background and General Criticism.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.