(Re)visions-STRONY_TYTULOWE_100K 17-03-26 13:15 Page 3
SYLWIA
WOJCIECHOWSKA
Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
Wydawnictwo WAM
Kraków 2017
© Jesuit University Ignatianum in Cracow, 2017
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Reviewer
Dr hab. Jacek Fabiszak, prof. UAM
Supervising editor
Roman Małecki
Graphic layout and DTP
Jacek Pawłowicz
Cover design
PHOTO DESIGN – Lesław Sławiński
Photo on the front cover:
Asher Brown Durand, The Beeches (1845),
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, http://www.metmuseum.org
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Contents
Acknowledgements — 7
List of abbreviations — 9
Introduction — 11
Chapter 1
Historical outline — 23
1.1. Towards a conceptual clarification: terminology — 23
1.2. Binary oppositions — 41
1.2.1. City versus countryside — 43
1.2.2. Art versus nature — 49
1.2.3. Life versus death — 54
1.2.4. Innocence versus experience — 60
1.3. Pastoral narration — 64
1.4. Pastoral mode — 82
Chapter 2
Man and nature — 89
2.1. Nature and civilisation in Thomas Hardy’s
The Woodlanders — 89
2.1.1. Nature and the art of rhetoric — 90
2.1.2. Seasonal patterns — 97
2.1.3. Questioning of pastoral equilibrium — 105
2.2. The anti-pastoral view of Western civilisation in Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World — 111
2.2.1. Counter-pastoral space — 113
2.2.2. Implicit pastoralism — 119
2.3. Image of modern Arcadia in Jim Crace’s Arcadia — 132
2.3.1. Back to the “landscape of the mind” — 133
2.3.2. Nostalgic visions in high-tech Arcadia — 138
6
Contents
Chapter 3
Man and society — 149
3.1. Pastoral implication in the Victorian novel: Adam Bede
by George Eliot — 149
3.1.1. Meaning of landscape — 151
3.1.2. Landscape descriptions and Ruskin’s art criticism — 159
3.1.3. Pastoral as a means of subtle allusion — 166
3.2. Pastoral as a means of social exploration: D.H. Lawrence’s Lady
Chatterley’s Lover — 175
3.2.1. Love and sensuality in the locus amoenus — 178
3.2.2. Lady Chatterley’s Lover and William Empson’s theory of
social reconciliation — 187
3.3. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: “an amusette to catch
those not easily caught” — 198
3.3.1. The supernatural and the locus amoenus — 199
3.3.2. Social criticism — 214
Chapter 4
Individual identity — 223
4.1. Growth into womanhood: The Mill on The Floss
by George Eliot — 223
4.1.1. Significance of the setting — 224
4.1.2. Maggie Tulliver’s growth into maturity — 228
4.2. Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife: a 21st-century
version of the pastoral — 236
4.2.1. The pastoral dimension — 237
4.2.2. “Time’s winged chariot”: the phenomenon of time and
the pastoral — 251
4.3. Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums: in search of the
truth — 256
4.3.1. Buddhist philosophy and the pastoral ideal — 256
4.3.2. Climbing Californian mountains and the idea of
spiritual quest — 263
Conclusion — 275
Bibliography — 291
Index of names — 303
Acknowledgements
This revision of the pastoral is the result of years of study and over this
time many scholars have influenced my perception of both academic research in general and the pastoral in particular. In view of my academic
development I would like to express my thanks to scholars who have
inspired me the most.
The academic couple who first fired my imagination are Dr hab.
Hanna Appel and Prof. dr hab. Włodzimierz Appel. They excited my
fascination with the ancient world and sensitized me to the value of the
written word for which I would like to express my deepest gratitude. The
scholar who disclosed the intricacies of the pastoral and utopia to me is
Prof. dr Hans Ulrich Seeber. It was during Professor Seeber’s seminars
that I traced the development of the pastoral and its vivacity. I am most
grateful for my years of study under his guidance and for his supervision
of my MA thesis on England’s Helicon. Another German scholar who
shaped my perception of narrative texts is Dr Jarmila Mildorf. My interest in Victorian England in terms of both culture and prose writings was
immensely influenced by the discussions with Dr Mildorf held at the
university and during the seminars in particular.
I feel profound gratitude to Prof. dr hab. Mirosława Buchholtz, without whose support my doctoral thesis would have only remained an unrealized dream. Professor Buchholtz was a wise advisor and guiding light
whose intellectual insight made a deep impression on my perception of
Henry James’s literary output and guided me through the years of work
8
Acknowledgements
on the pastoral. I would also like to express my thanks to the reviewers
of my doctoral thesis, Prof. dr hab. Andrzej Wicher and Dr hab. Jacek
Fabiszak, prof. UAM, whose discerning suggestions helped me broaden
my horizons. This study is a revision of that thesis.
In the end I would like to express my thanks to my family: to my dear
husband, Jerzy, and our children Julia, Jan, and Zofia. In the first place,
however, I would like to thank those without whose support I would not
be the person who I am, to my parents, Krystyna and Marian Jóskowski.
I dedicate this study to them.
List of abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in parenthetical references in the study:
A – Jim Crace, 1993, Arcadia, Pan Books, London.
AB – George Eliot, 1985, Adam Bede, Penguin Books, London.
D&Ch – Longus, 1989, Daphnis and Chloe, Penguin Books, London.
DB – Jack Kerouac, 2007, The Dharma Bums, Penguin Classics, London.
BNW – Aldous Huxley, 1989, Brave New World, Harper Perennial Library,
New York.
LCL – D.H. Lawrence, 2007, Lady Chatterle’s Lover, Wordsworth Classics,
Ware.
MF – George Eliot, 1994, The Mill on the Floss, Penguin Books, London.
W – Thomas Hardy, 2004, The Woodlanders, Wordsworth Editions,
Chatham.
P – William Wordsworth, 1994, The Prelude in: Wordsworth William,
1994, The Collected Poetry of William Wordsworth, Wordsworth Editions, Chatham.
RC – Daniel Defoe, 1961, Robinson Crusoe, New American Library of
World Literature, New York and Toronto.
SVP – William Empson, 1974, Some Versions of Pastoral, New Directions
Publishing, New York.
AYLI – William Shakespeare, 2001, As You Like It, The Arden Shakespeare,
London.
TS – James Henry, 2000, The Turn of the Screw & The Aspern Papers,
Wordsworth Editions, London.
10
List of abbreviations
TTW – Audrey Niffenegger, 2005, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Vintage, London.
If not otherwise indicated, I quote poetry following The Arnold Anthology of British and Irish Literature in English, ed. by Robert Clark and Thomas
Healey, Arnold, London 2002.
Introduction
The pastoral is a long-standing convention. It has its origins in the Idylls,
a collection of poems written in accordance with a new poetic formula praising the country life to be found in distant Sicily. Their author,
Theocritus, was a Sicilian-born poet who left Sicily for the metropolis of Alexandria, where he composed his poetry in order to please the
sophisticated tastes of the aristocracy living in the Ptolemeian Egypt.
His poems proved to be not only original but also highly influential. In
fact, they appealed strongly to later poets, among whom Virgil has been
considered the leading pastoralist. Theocritus and Virgil are generally
acknowledged as the fathers of the genre, the latter even eclipsing the
fame of his predecessor with his pastoral collection of the Eclogues.
The moment in the literary history of the convention which interests
me the most came much later, however, with the advent of Romanticism. It is, in fact, the time of the death of the genre, when the pastoral
became a literary genre driven ad absurdum by its artificiality. It was
a moment of a profound transformation within the convention which
Alastair Fowler summarises as follows: “Pastoral eclogue is dead! Long
live pastoral!” (Fowler 1971: 214). The phrase seems to capture the moment in which the pastoral ends its literary existence as a genre, i.e. the
eclogue, and continues to exist as a mode, the pastoral mode. Thus, the
death of the genre in Romanticism does not simultaneously denote the
death of the convention. Deprived of the artificiality of the “outer form”,
12
Introduction
the genre survived as a set of “inner features”.1 The “outer form” is characterised by certain metric requirements, the use of specific stylistic
means, the presence of a pastoral speaker (a herdsman) who comes to
a locus amoenus (a lovely place).2 The pastoral speaker participates in
a singing contest (Greek: agon) which is the artistic crowning of the
“pastoral convening” (Alpers 1996: 81).3 For centuries, poems of such
an “outer form” were composed by Virgil, Petrarch4 , Spenser and Pope.
By the end of Classicism, however, the genre ceased to be practised and,
presumably due to the calculated display of high artifice, it was discredited by Romantic poets. Once the artificial formula was rejected, the
pastoral ideal began to filter into other genres and to modify them. The
mode, i.e. the set of “inner features”, is now perceived as an attitude “(...)
as distinguished from [its] realisation or manifestation in specific devices, conventions, structures”(Alpers 1996: 47).
Since the following study is intended to demonstrate the richness of
the pastoral mode as well as to prove its vivid presence in post-Romantic prose fiction, the differentiation between the genre and the mode is
quite crucial. This analysis focuses exclusively on the mode. However,
since the mode is inseparably connected with the genre on account of
their common literary history, occasional references to a range of works
representing the pastoral genre seem advisable.
The following study is divided into two parts. The first part, Chapter 1,
provides a historical background to the pastoral literary tradition of both
the genre and the mode, whereas the second part, consisting of Chapters
2, 3, and 4, is focused on the critical exploration of several versions of the
pastoral. The latter part is the core of my study, in which I explore the potential of the mode, evident in narratives generically categorised otherwise.
1
Terms applied by Paul Alpers in: Alpers (1996: 45).
2
Locus amoenus (Latin, a lovely place) is a Latin phrase meaning “a set-piece description of an ideal landscape which often forms the backdrop for romantic encounters”
(Loughrey 1984: 25). More information on the concept in Chapter 1 of this study.
3
In his study, Alpers analyses the initial meaning of the verb “convene” (coming together,
from Latin convenire). According to him, the “pastoral convening” lies at the root of
the pastoral. Cf. Alpers (1996: 80f).
4
Petrarch wrote Latin eclogues, Bucolicum Carmen. Latin eclogues were also composed
by Sannazaro, Eclogae piscatoriae.
Introduction
13
It is generally agreed upon in scholarly circles that the pastoral
“seems nowadays easier to recognize than to define” (Snyder 1998: 1).
In Poland, the problem perhaps reaches even deeper: it seems that the
pastoral is merely connoted as the genre. Thus, it is considered an archaic literary form which is no longer practised by writers.5 Słownik
rodzajów i gatunków literackich (Gazda, Tyniecka-Makowska 2006), for
example, lists several sub-genres of the pastoral, namely “ekloga” (ibidem 198), “idyll” and “idylla” (ibidem 306ff)6 , “bukolika” (ibidem 96ff),
“pastorela” (ibidem 515f), “pastourelle” (ibidem 517f), “pastoral play”
(ibidem 514f), and “sielanka”, i.e. the pastoral (my translation; ibidem
698ff). These sub-genres are claimed to be no longer practised as literary
forms, with the exception of last term. When commenting on it, Izabella
Adamczewska poses a crucial question: is the pastoral a dead genre?”
(my translation, ibidem 699). As Adamczewska observes, however, the
question is not clearly answered since, on the one hand, some critics
claim that the death of the pastoral occurred in the 19th century. On the
other hand, however, there are critics who maintain that its formal determinants lost their validity and the genre, liable to innovation, is still
practised. In this case, the pastoral may be understood as the presence
of country life and of the Arcadian myth. Adamczewska further states
that today it seems advisable to examine the pastoral convention or to
speak about a play with the convention, not about the genre. This is
a standpoint I would like to support with my study. Nonetheless, Adamczewska seems tentative in her claims: not only does she constantly use
the past tense in her account of the pastoral but she also remains purely hypothetical as to its vivacity. Moreover, no detailed information on
contemporary pastoral literature is included.
As hypothetical as Adamczewska’s claim is, it is still more accurate in
reporting the path of evolution that the pastoral has taken than the account
one finds in Słownik terminów literackich (Głowiński 2008). Here, the account of the pastoral is closed with the statement that Romantic discussion
5
Cf., for example, Damm, Kardasz (2003: 327); Krassowski (1996: 205f); Cudak, Pytasz
(2005: 406ff); Sierotwiński (1970: 288).
6
The differentiation seems to suggest that “idyll” and “idylla” are two different sub-genres
which is apparently not the case.
14
Introduction
ended its life in Polish literature (Głowiński 2008: 509). Furthermore, the
author of another entry in the dictionary maintains that in modern times
the pastoral was sometimes adopted by neoclassical poets in the 19th and
20th centuries (ibidem 377). This statement narrows down the pastoral to
poetry.7 Both hypotheses, however, may be accounted for by the fact that
the authors probably refer exclusively to Polish literature, whereas the focus
of the present study lies on the development of the pastoral in Anglophone
literature. The terminological entanglement also characterises British and
American criticism which testifies to the general uncertainty about the formal aspects of the convention in scholarly circles.
This confusion of terms and ideas about the pastoral, as well as the
open admissions made by literary critics that it is extremely difficult to
provide a satisfactory definition of the mode, has only served to incite
my interest in the convention. At the same time, it has seemed necessary
to open the study with an attempt to define the mode and to track its
development up until the present day. Thus, Chapter 1 is focused on the
clarification of crucial concepts and the outline of the relevant historical
background for the discussion. The binary oppositions which constitute
the core of the convention or, in Paul Alpers’ words, the set of the “inner
features”, are given major significance. The analysis is intended to display the sources of the tensions which enliven the pastoral mode.
As far as the history of the pastoral tradition is concerned, I begin
ab ovo, i.e. with the poetry of Theocritus and his ancient epigones. Further, I conduct a study of the modern European history of the pastoral,
paying special attention to its landmark moment, namely, the advent of
Romanticism and to the innovative idea of the pastoral introduced in
the poetry of William Wordsworth. I also try and outline its successful
application to drama and prose fiction. In the case of the latter, I trace
its origins to the first pastoral narrative, Daphnis and Chloe by Longus.
In the second part of my study, the critical attention centres upon
the pastoral in post-Romantic prose fiction. I refer to the pastoral in its
broadest and deepest meaning, which does not include the oversimplification of the country life offered in commercials and advertisements.
7
A profound analysis of contemporary pastoral poetry in Poland is included in: Zaleski
(2007).
Introduction
15
This is the problem which any critic of the pastoral must have faced:
the public associate the pastoral with kitsch and wishful sentimentality,
a picture often promoted in television and the press. Unfortunately for
the mode, the media have successfully adapted the dream of Arcadia,
which has resulted in distorted ideas of the pastoral generally and in the
pejorative quality of the term in everyday language.
The simplistic everyday understanding of the pastoral is not the subject matter of the study. I explore the literary realisation of the pastoral
as a convention of escape-and-return. In this case, the literary Arcadia
offers a pastoral speaker a shelter for successful discovery of the truth
about the world and himself or herself. Thus, the locus amoenus (the
lovely place), be it a garden, a wood, a clearing, or the Garden of Eden8,
allows them to redefine their idea of the world they have escaped from.
Consequently, the stay in the place is not an end in itself. This kind of
the pastoral has been called “the imaginative and complex” (Marx 1967:
5), because it offers insight into a certain situation which has instigated
the escape to Arcadia. Thus, the external world becomes a pivot around
which pastoral thought and the target of the pastoral sojourn oscillates.
This is the leading paradox inscribed in the mode. As Gifford claims,
“the essential paradox of the pastoral [is that] (...) a retreat to a place
apparently without the anxieties of the town, or the court, or the present,
actually delivers insights into the culture from which it originates” (Gifford 1999: 82).
As suggested above, the study centres on the complex pastoral and,
as a consequence, the examination of this paradox becomes its focal
point. The analysis is divided into three analytical chapters, according
to the nature of the tensions in a given literary version of pastoral. The
novels selected for this study are subsumed under three categories: the
first one unites novels investigating the relation between humanity and
the natural world, the second one those exploring pressures within
society whereas the third one focuses on personal development of an
individual.
The choice of the novels which are deemed to be representative
for each category is far from random even if some of them might be
8
A broad list of literary lovely places is given in: Gifford (1999: 81f).
16
Introduction
surprising at first glance. Since I have hoped to stir a debate on the pastoral mode, for each group I selected one novel whose pastoralism is
generally acclaimed and two further novels whose mode is questionable.
The problematic novels either seem pastoral but prove to be anti-pastoral; or they strike one as unpastoral yet, if investigated from the pastoral
vantage point, they provide an endorsement of the pastoral ethos which
is only discernible after some consideration.
Thus, three Victorian novels open each section: Thomas Hardy’s The
Woodlanders, George Eliot’s Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss are
famous for their pastoralism. There are critics who list them as examples
of pastoral novels (cf. Squires 1974) and those who rather refrain from
such generic categorisation.9 This inconsistency inspired me to include
them in my study and, as the critics are unanimous in underlying their
pastoral character, I refer to them as model repositories of pastoral motifs, concerns and topoi.
I juxtapose the celebrated Victorian novels with three other literary
texts which constitute their polar opposites in terms of pastoral analysis.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World does not display a pastoral vision,
and yet it offers valuable material if investigated from pastoral vantage
point. The same holds true for The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
Due to its oriental title the final novel of this study, The Dharma Bums,
can hardly be expected to be pastoral and yet it pleads for pastoral ethos.
Three remaining novels fill the space for investigation between the
polar extremes: their pastoralism is either heavily implied to be finally
questioned (Jim Crace’s Arcadia) or hardly expected, yet proved to be
the leading mode (D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Audrey
Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife). Aware of the exclusion involved,
I have to admit that the discussion is selective, its aim directed at revising a variety of pastoral paradigms and opening space for reconsideration of the applicability of the mode today.
The starting point for the investigation has been the following
statement:
9
Paul Alpers calls some pastoral aspects of Adam Bede in question. Cf. Alpers (1996:
378f). Similarly, in the case of The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy (2004: 418), a novel
which the critic calls “a novelistic version of pastoral elegy” (Ibidem: 420).
Introduction
17
Since the novel is the characteristic form of the epoch in which the literary
system ceased to be expressed by clearly defined and related genres, it seems
neither useful nor plausible to claim for the pastoral novel the literary motivation or generic coherence of older forms. Rather, a piece of fiction can be
called pastoral when its author—for whatever reason, with whatever awareness, and concerned with whatever subject or theme—has recourse to usages
which are characteristic of older pastorals and which in turn make a tale or
novel pastoral in mode. (Alpers 1996: 376)
I endorse Paul Alpers’ stance on modality and genre: it seems worthwhile to discuss the problematic novels by juxtaposing them with those
acclaimed as pastoral by the wide public and by the scholars. In the
case of the problematic novels, the comparison brings to light additional readings which otherwise might have remained covered or merely
guessed. The analysis of pastoral modality lays bare the mechanisms
governing the perception of the readers of a given narrative.
As indicated above, the analytical part of this study consists of three
chapters. Chapter 2 is the first analytical chapter. It explores the relations between man and nature. The analysis opens with the examination of Thomas
Hardy’s The Woodlanders, a narrative which portrays the world as it used to
be at the beginning of the transformation induced by the Industrial Revolution. The study oscillates around the concept of the pastoral equilibrium,
with references to The Prelude by Wordsworth and Darwinian theory of
evolution. The second novel in this chapter is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World. Since the novel primarily represents a dystopia, the convergence
between Arcadia and utopia, as well as the counter-pastoral and the anti-utopia is first explored. In this context, the notion of the locus horridus
(the horrid place), the counter-equivalent of the locus amoenus in utopian
writings, is in the spotlight. The literary context is delivered by Shakespeare’s
The Tempest and As You Like It. The last novel investigated in Chapter 2
is a contemporary book by Jim Crace, provocatively entitled Arcadia. The
revealing title notwithstanding, the novel openly challenges the pastoral in
many respects, the locale in the first place: Arcadia is a shopping mall situated in the middle of a city. Although, at first glance, the novel seems to
mock the pastoral, it actually advocates the pastoral ideal. The justification
for such a reading of Crace’s Arcadia can be found in the theory of hyperreality created by Jean Baudrillard, applied in the part of the analysis.
18
Introduction
The three novels analysed in Chapter 2 represent different versions
of the spatial pastoral. As far as the phrase “a version of the pastoral” is
concerned, it was introduced into the criticism of the pastoral by William Empson in 1935 in his seminal study on the mode, entitled Some
Versions of the Pastoral. Empson seems to be the first literary critic who
searched for the pastoral in literature as distant from the generic roots of
the mode as, for example, proletarian literature or Alice in Wonderland.
As far as modern criticism of the pastoral is concerned, frequent references to the monographs by Michael Squires, The Pastoral Novel. Studies
in George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence (1974), and by Paul
Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (1996) proved helpful. The former contains
valuable readings of several novels by famous Victorian writers listed in
its title. Some of the ideas presented in the study are inspired by Squires’
criticism, which I indicate further. My approach differs from the one
adopted by Squires in its frame of literary reference: in my study, Victorian pastoral narratives are meant to serve as starting points for comparative analyses of contemporary novels. Alpers’ criticism has been
helpful in providing a theoretical background for widening the scheme
of literary reference.
As far as the notion of the spatial pastoral is concerned, I apply the
differentiation between spatial and temporal Arcadia, as explored by Susan Snyder in Pastoral Process. Spenser, Marvell, Milton. Susan Snyder
rightly points out that the locus amoenus may either be located somewhere “over there”, in space, or “back then”, in the past. An example of
the former kind of the pastoral may be the Forest of Arden in William
Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Chapter 2 of my study represents, for the
most part, this kind of Arcadia. By contrast, temporal Arcadia, situated
“back then”, is generally explored in Chapters 3 and 4.
Chapter 3 is focused on the investigation of the tensions which exist
in society. It opens with a Victorian novel, Adam Bede, a profoundly
pastoral narrative, the one which brought its authoress, George Eliot,
fame, if not fortune. I investigate the pictorial dimension of the novel
and search for its pastoral and Edenic quality. The examination is centred upon pastoral aestheticism, i.e. upon the aesthetic values of pastoral locale descriptions which are targeted at creating the impression
of Edenic beauty of a given locus amoenus. I refer the novel to the art
Introduction
19
criticism of John Ruskin, a critic Eliot valued and admired. Since the
plot of Adam Bede hinges upon a taboo subject, extra-marital love resulting in pregnancy and death, the main target of the analysis is to indicate how the pastoral mode enabled the Victorian authoress to address
this difficult topic in her work.
The interpretation of Adam Bede is followed by an analysis of D.H.
Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Astounding as the juxtaposition is in
terms of the treatment of sexuality, it is perfectly accountable for when
investigated for the pastoral impulse characterising both novels. The
starting point for this part of the study is Daphnis and Chloe by Longus,
a modern reference point is Hardy’s Tess of D’Urbervilles. This part of my
study is meant to prove the potential of the pastoral mode as a literary
means enabling the authors to express their viewpoint on difficult subject matters without transgressing social norms.
The second focal point of my interpretation of Lady Chatterley’s
Lover is its vision of social reconciliation, exemplified by harmonious
relationship between Lady Chatterley and the gamekeeper. Empson’s
theory of the social potential of the pastoral ideal offers the theoretical background for this chapter. I am especially interested in examining
the world which is governed by the pastoral ethos and which the novel
seems to advocate. By the pastoral ethos, I understand a world in which
honesty, work, and truthfulness count for more than money and ambition. In relation to the pastoral romance, I also examine the process of
maturation and eventual transformation of the female protagonist as
well as the role of language in ascertaining one’s social and personal
identity.
The third narrative analysed from the perspective of its social-pastoral dimension is Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. I argue that the image of Bly oscillates between two opposite poles, the locus amoenus and
the locus horridus. I wish to claim that one of the sources of the appeal of
The Turn of the Screw is the supernatural character of Bly, a lovely place
which diametrically changes into a place known from horror books and
films. In relation to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, I also investigate
the nature of evil in James’s novella.
My analysis of The Turn of the Screw is a contribution to two main currents of interpretation of the novella widely acknowledged in scholarly
20
Introduction
circles: the “apparitionist” and the “non-apparitionist” interpretation.
Thus, first I demonstrate certain pastoral characteristics which may be
numbered in support of the “apparitionist” theory, i.e. a theory which
accepts the existence of ghosts at Bly as worthy of belief. Second, I analyse the criticism of British society at the turn of the 20th century expressed in the novella with reference to the pastoral. The latter interpretation favours the “non-apparitionist” approach, arguing that the ghosts
are the mere hallucinations of an insane governess. This reading seems
to lay bare the discouraging situation of lower-class women on the labour market as well as the difficult situation of upper class children.
The perspective of the last analytical chapter of my study, Chapter
4, is narrowed down to the observation of the changes in the mind and
psyche of a given protagonist. As far as the theoretical background is
concerned, the starting point of the analysis is Susan Snyder’s suggestion that the pastoral may be often regarded as much more than a set of
pastoral topoi. It may be considered a process which ends in the complete transformation of the protagonist. The first novel interpreted in
this context is George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. Since I have dedicated
a separate chapter to another book by George Eliot, I will not, however,
display all the richness of pastoral reminiscences in The Mill on the Floss.
The novel belongs to the genre of the Bildungsroman and, for this
reason, it seems natural that the process of maturation is the pivot of the
narrative. I intend to prove the significance of the locale, which exhibits
certain pastoral characteristics, in modelling the character and the psychological profile of the female protagonist. The point of convergence
between the version of the pastoral the novel represents, the temporal pastoral, and the tragic denouement of the narrative fall within the
scope of the examination.
The interpretation of the mental growth of a Victorian protagonist
is followed by an analysis of the maturation of a contemporary young
American woman as presented in The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey
Niffenegger. The generic affiliation of the contemporary novel, i.e.
magic realism, and the lack of chronology are no major obstacle to its
pastoralism. The presentation of the locus amoenus, the Meadow, as
well as its transience contribute to the pastoral character of The Time
Travele’s Wife. The phenomenon of time is analysed in the light of
Introduction
21
Buczyńska-Garewicz’s philosophical criticism, Metafizyczne rozważania o czasie. The Time Traveler’s Wife seems to be a literary realisation
of the idea of time circularity which does not necessarily exclude the
feeling of nostalgia and, by extension, its reading as a pastoral narrative.
The last novel interpreted in the study is Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma
Bums. Published in the middle of the 20th century by a leading light of
the Beat Movement and imbued with Buddhist motifs, the novel seems
to oppose the Western European cultural background of the pastoral.
The narrative is a curious mixture of Western and Eastern schools of
thought. My interpretation focuses on the points of convergence between the pastoral and Buddhist perception of the world. I explore the
process of individual metamorphosis experienced by the protagonist
whenever he becomes exposed to the influence of pastoral space, in this
case, of spatial pastoral.
As a whole, the present study aims to provide evidence that the pastoral has been operating strongly in post-Romantic Anglophone prose
fiction. In my research I refer to criticism which has become canon for
contemporary scholars, first of all to works of a long-standing critical
tradition by William Empson, Erwin Panofsky, Peter V. Marinelli, Bruno Snell, Leo Marx, Renato Poggioli, Ulrich C. Knoepflmacher and Michael Squires. I adduce the arguments voiced by contemporary scholars as well, among whom I repeatedly refer to the stance on pastoral
assumed by Paul Alpers, Terry Gifford and Susan Snyder. In my study
I display the generic diversity of works in which the pastoral impulse is
present. It has shaped utopian and dystopian writings, Bildungsroman, the
novella, regional and autobiographical novels as well as works representing magic realism. The mode may be employed in order to re-consider
the nature of personal relations, in which the characters are involved,
or define the rapport between the man and his or her social or natural environment. Recently, it has also been employed in environmental
literature, ecological writings as well as in elegiac poetry dedicated to
homosexual lovers and AIDS victims. Since the mode is based on polar
tensions, it only depends on the given author which of the tensions to
emphasize and, as a consequence, what sub-genre of pastoral to apply in
his or her literary work.
22
Introduction
One final point calls for clarification: the relatively few and far between references to Polish literature in an examination conducted by
a Pole. The major reason for the scarcity is the scope of the study, the
focus on Anglophone fiction. Such a wording of the title, however, does
not preclude the inclusion of Polish pastoralism. Two reasons lie behind my abstinence. First of all, a fleeting consultation of a selection of
post-Romantic pastoral works gives the reader an impression of a shift
in perspective in Polish national literature if juxtaposed with Anglophone literature. Since the partitions of Poland ended the existence of
a free country at the close of the 18th century for more than one hundred years, the feeling of nostalgia and loss in a historical setting gained
a unique significance in Polish pastoral works. This extremity would
need much research to be conducted in order to avoid formulation of
superficial statements. The in-depth study, however, would on the one
hand call for appropriate coverage and, on the other, it would distract
the readers from the issues in focus of this revision. Thus, the topic of
Polish pastoralism in post-Romantic prose fiction still awaits its proper
examination.