Preface

Summary

The study of eighteenth-century poetry has experienced major advances in the past decade or so, and the present work is offered as part of a much larger process of rediscovery and reassessment. Many thousands of poems about rural life were written between 1700 and 1800, and I have chosen to look closely at a small number of texts rather than embarking on a comprehensive survey. The poems I have selected for attention may be seen as representing wider trends, as well as being of individual interest; but the main reason I have focused my attention so closely is in order to give the texts the kind of detailed treatment which (I would argue) is the only way by which they yield significant meaning. Part of what I want to do, indeed, is to assess the degree to which an interdisciplinary and detailed reading can enable us to rediscover the poetry of the eighteenth century, without on the one hand condescending to or apologising for it, or on the other losing sight of our own concerns and interests, our reasons for reading. I have for similar reasons focused my resources on two topics, concentrating on the related themes of rural labour (Part I) and agricultural prescription (Part II). Rural labour seems to me to have been the most important aspect of rural life in the period, for the rural population as well as for the more thoughtful of the poets; while agricultural prescription was a central preoccupation of the eighteenth century, one which tells us a great deal about the period and its psyche.