Twentieth-Century American Pastorals
We are seeking an additional member for a proposed panel on
twentieth-century American pastorals for the 2005 International Society
for the History of Rhetoric Conference, co-sponsored by the University
of Southern California and the Huntington Library, which will be held in
Los Angeles, July 13-17.
In The Country and the City, Raymond Williams explains how the shopworn
conventions of the pastoral tradition were reworked by Pope and other
English poets, resulting in "a new metaphor, in the English country, for
the oldest rural ideal. Not the nymphs and shepherds of neo-pastoral
romance, in their courtly love in the parks and gardens; but the quiet,
the innocence, the simple plenty of the countryside: the metaphorical
but also the actual retreat." Extending the formulations of Williams,
the panel will consider how the pastoral, in its revised form, becomes a
commonplace across many cultural fields in twentieth-century America.
After the grand utopian schemes and grotesqueries of early modernism,
code words such as "simplicity," "naturalness," and "organicism" begin
circulating with increasing frequency in fields such as music,
architecture, photography, cooking, and domestic advice. As a
commonplace, the American pastoral has been an immensely popular and
productive tool for rhetorical invention, drawing its practitioners into
a dense nexus of lore and living tradition, while leaving ample room to
experiment.
Topics may include:
The Grand Ole Opry
Craft fairs
Americana fashion designs
The pastoral and American political rhetoric (FDR, Reagan, George W.
Bush)
Marketing of organic foods
Real Simple magazine
The American pastoral in Japan, Europe, the Philippines, etc.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Prairie Style Architecture
Walker Evans
American Scene Painting
If you are interested, please send 250-word abstracts by May 1, 2004 to
dgbrook@purdue.edu.
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