What Is Pastoral?

Alpers, Paul

doi:10.1086/448164

Cited by 27 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…In the following, however, I want to suggest that cinematic representations of SoHo and the surrounding Downtown bohemia in the mid‐1980s exhibited pastoral rather than picturesque sensibilities. A heterogeneous term originally associated with Roman literature (Alpers ), pastoral refers to idealized depictions of agricultural labour (the shepherd/nymph motif), although the term has also been deployed in relation to modern art (Crow ; Greenberg :51–52; Stallabrass :237–245) and urban aesthetics (Daniels ; Gandy ) including in the context of arts‐led gentrification (Harris ). Unlike the picturesque tendency to aestheticize suffering, the pastoral, both in its literary and visual forms, idealizes or removes hardship from view in favour of an emphasis on the simple pleasures of the poor (casual sex, drugs and clubs were the equivalents in 1980s New York cinema to the nymphs, flutes and wine of Arcadia).…”

Section: Through Neon‐tinted Spectaclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape and Gentrification: The Picturesque and Pastoral in 1980s New York Cinema

Andersson

2016

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In this article I discuss 1980s New York cinema through the conceptual lens of landscape, drawing in particular on the interconnected but separate traditions of the pastoral and the picturesque. While the former mode of representing landscape is idealizing (the shepherd/nymph-motif), the latter with its origins in the period of the enclosures of the English countryside tends to aestheticize poverty and dispossession. This distinction can productively be deployed in relation to tensions between glamorization and exploitation in 1980s New York cinema, which often dealt with the themes of rent, eviction, and unemployment in postindustrial settings. Focusing in particular on Downtown 81 (Edo Bertoglio, 1981/2000 and Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985), I argue that the current nostalgia for a pre-gentrified and less regulated New York in popular culture is dependent on these idealizing and aestheticizing tendencies insofar that they conceal or prettify some of the darker aspects of the period.

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Section: Through Neon‐tinted Spectaclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape and Gentrification: The Picturesque and Pastoral in 1980s New York Cinema

Andersson

2016

Antipode

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“…It implies that nature is culture and culture is nature. The "representative anecdote" (Alpers, 1982;1996) of Ao's unpopulated pastoral, which is an inversion of traditional pastoral, 6 is not "the lives of shepherds" (Alpers, 1982: 449) but the lives and experiences of hills, forests, seasons, rivers, birds, and fish, which act and behave like humans in a pastoral landscape. Ao's pastoral is both representative and anecdotal because of the typicality of the reality it represents and her selection of nature as the primary agency in the pastoral is indicative of priority given to the hills and environment.…”

Section: Post-pastoral Ecopoetics In the Hill-poemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Naga pastoral? The post-pastoral possibilities in Temsula Ao’s hill-poems

Chakraborty

2016

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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In this article I attempt to show the Ao-Nagas’ experience of living in the hills under pre-industrial and industrial systems as represented in the poems of Temsula Ao, an award-winning poet from Nagaland, India. Ao represents the pre-industrial cultural landscape as peaceful, simple, and harmonious and uses the devices of idealization, nostalgia, and return and retreat, and represents the industrial cultural landscape as discordant and as constituting a struggle for survival. I argue that the powerful critical tool of post-pastoral reveals the dynamic ecopoetics in Ao’s poems.

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“…Because these processes traverse heterogeneous materials (voice, sound, music, text), no single methodology would suffice. Therefore this article draws methodologically from multiple fields: feminist theory (Irigaray 1985 and1993), studies on electronic music (particularly Emmerson 1994, Smalley 1992, literature (Genette 1982, Alpers 1982, Werf 1995, and semiotics (Barthes 1975(Barthes , 1977.…”

Section: Woman In the Centrementioning

confidence: 99%

“…9 The electronic part creates an atmosphere of pastoral similar to Saariaho's La dame à la licorne (1993). A pastoral is a genre in literature (including drama and poetry), visual arts and music, which depicts tranquillity, the pleasures of love, and a delicate balance between human and nature and among humans, all this in an idyllic landscape (Alpers 1982, Gifford 1999. One frequent theme in pastorals is the lament: singers pour their hearts into music in order to commemorate the loss of their beloved (Alpers 1997: 81-93).…”

Section: 'Noises' and 'Pure Sounds'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Desire and distance in Kaija Saariaho's Lonh

Sivuoja-Gunaratnam

2003

Org. Sound

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This article explores the relationship of desire and distance in Kaija Saariaho's Lonh (1996) for soprano and electronics. The subject matter of Lonh is desire and romantic pleasures, anchored to feminine subjectivity, represented on stage by a soprano singer. Electronics provide the environmental sounds and amplify the singer's voice. Through Lonh looms a medieval song in the Occitan language, ‘Lanquan li jorn son lonc en mai’ by Jaufré Rudel, a famous troubadour in twelfth-century Provence. Saariaho reverses the narrative convention of love stories by presenting the most intimate encounter at the very beginning. In their succeeding encounters, the lovers move further away from each other. Similarly, in the course of Lonh the distance to Jaufré's song also increases. Luce Irigaray's concepts of love are used for an analysis of the relationship of the loving pair. By the end of Lonh the borderlines of speaking, singing, electronics, language and music collapse in Barthesian jouissance (bliss). The electronic technology in Lonh enables the re-investiture of cultural values, and the construction of flexible identities, crossing boundaries between the self and the other.

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What Is Pastoral?

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

Landscape and Gentrification: The Picturesque and Pastoral in 1980s New York Cinema

Landscape and Gentrification: The Picturesque and Pastoral in 1980s New York Cinema

Naga pastoral? The post-pastoral possibilities in Temsula Ao’s hill-poems

Desire and distance in Kaija Saariaho's Lonh

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