ABSTRACT
This essay takes an interdisciplinary approach to traditional English folk music that combines literary ecocriticism and cultural geography in order to focus on the ecocritical implications of the use of the pastoral mode in the traditional folk repertoire. The three main aspects discussed are: what using the pastoral mode meant to the song collectors, particularly Cecil Sharp, the most influential collector behind the Edwardian folk revival; what the pastoral may have meant to singers and audiences in the past; and what it means in the contemporary English folk music scene. Marxist writers, such as A.L. Lloyd, Dave Harker, and Raymond Williams, tended to view the pastoral dimension in folk music as an escape from the contemporary realities of an urbanizing, industrial society. For ecocritics such as Leo Marx, Laurence Buell, and Patrick Curry, in contrast, the pastoral can embody both a critique of the present and an orientation towards a more sustainable future. In this interpretative context, the traditional song “When Spring Comes In” becomes a celebration of the topophilia and biophilia that many ecocritics view as a necessary element in environmental awareness. In this essay, folk music in general emerges both as part of a complex politics of nostalgia in English culture and as a potential exemplar of local, sustainable cultural production.
