ABSTRACT

In Ecocriticism and Early Modern English Literature, Todd Borlik not only uses notions of hard and soft pastoral, together with Marx’s distinction between simple and complex pastoral, but he proposes his own separation of ‘contemplative’ from ‘consumptive’ pastoral. Some ecocritics on both sides of the Atlantic, and beyond, have developed a renewed interest in the pastoral in its wide diversity of forms. Jennifer K. Ladino, whilst remarking that ‘the relationship between nostalgia and pastoral deserves more attention’, observes that for American writers, ‘it seems that pastoral is the nature narrative most frequently called upon to imagine more ethical human-nature and human-human relationships’. The 2011 conference of the US branch of the Association for Studies in Literature and Environment hosted a round table titled ‘Cosmopolitics and the Radical Pastoral’ that attracted a standing-room-only crowd of 150 people.