ABSTRACT
The proliferation of writing about environmental crisis in Britain in the two decades has brought new experimentation with pastoral. The premise of environmental crisis unsettles the stability of nature and human–nature relations that underpins the formulations of pastoral. Crucial to Gerald Leonard’s version of pastoral is the fact that it is able to occur alongside the knowledge of the negative effects of human action upon the environment. In John Glister, Burnside creates a new version of pastoral in a place where its appeals and contrasts no longer appear to be tenable. Leonard’s unsparing commitment to ‘seeing what is before him’, as George Perkins Marsh counselled, evolves into a pastoral of responsibility, caution, and reverence. The harmonious synchronicity is re-conceived as a chain of causes and effects with devastating consequences. The pastoral is necessarily altered in the process, by adapting its features to different circumstances, and by integrating new conditions into its landscapes.
