Plowswords: Literature and the Agricultural Trap from Shakespeare to Coetzee

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Synopsis
A critical examination of the &‘agricultural trap&’ in literature For thousands of years, agriculture and civilization were essentially synonymous. The superiority of farming over the unsettled, itinerant life of hunting and gathering appeared, to many, self-evident. Only recently has the field of anthropology challenged this assumption by positing that foragers were, and are, actually happier and healthier than people living in agro-cultures. Plowswords is the first work to consider the refiguring of the agricultural revolution into the agricultural trap through a literary lens. Reading texts that depict farmers in conflict with foragers, Cates Baldridge argues that agricultural ideology justified the tedium and toil of farming by enlisting a rhetorical foil: the &“savage&” and &“backward&” hunter-gatherer. Texts such as The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness, and the novels of J. M. Coetzee use this figure either to exalt farming&’s triumph over foraging or to mourn the consequences of the agricultural turn, anxiously championing or stridently challenging the received wisdom of humanity&’s supposed progress.
Copyright:
2024

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
232 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780813951645
Related ISBNs:
9780813951638, 9780813951621
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Outdoors and Nature, Social Studies, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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