Love in a Green shade: Idyllic Romances Ancient to Modern Lincoln and London.Richard F. Hardin, Love in a Green shade: Idyllic Romances Ancient to Modern Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. x + 2 pls. + 279 pp. $50. ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m : 0-8032-2394-3. This rich comparative study traces the influence of Longus's Daphnis and Chloe Daphnis and Chloe is the only known work of the 2nd century AD Greek novelist and romancer Longus.[1] Setting and style It is set on the isle of Lesbos during the 2nd century AD, which is also assumed to be the author's home. in European literature from the Renaissance to the present. Richard Hardin is Professor of English at the University of Kansas The University of Kansas (often referred to as KU or just Kansas) is an institution of higher learning in Lawrence, Kansas. The main campus resides atop Mount Oread. and the author of Civil Idolatry Idolatry Aaron responsible for the golden calf. [O.T.: Exodus 32] Ashtaroth Canaanite deities worshiped profanely by Israelites. [O.T. : Desacralizing and Monarchy in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton and Survivals of Pastoral. Chapter 1, "Idyllic Romance," offers various observations on this sub-genre of pastoral, which is characterized by romance, courtship, and marriage, in contrast to the rustic struggles of "georgic geor·gic adj. also geor·gi·cal Of or relating to agriculture or rural life. n. A poem concerning farming or rural life. [Latin ge fiction" (6). A summary of Longus's novel reveals various motifs -- shipwreck shipwreck, complete or partial destruction of a vessel as a result of collision, fire, grounding, storm, explosion, or other mishap. In the ancient world sea travel was hazardous, but in modern times the number of shipwrecks due to nonhostile causes has steadily , confused identities, and the passage of years -- which link his idyllic novel with other Greek romances. Chapter 2, "Renaissance Rediscoveries," sketches the reception of Longus before the Restoration. Although the Greek text was not published until 1598, many read the work in the 1559 French translation by Amyot, which formed the basis of an English translation by Angel Day. (A 1538 Italian version by Annibale Caro remained inedited in·ed·it·ed adj. 1. Not edited. 2. Not published. .) This chapter concentrates on the English romances canonized can·on·ize tr.v. can·on·ized, can·on·iz·ing, can·on·iz·es 1. To declare (a deceased person) to be a saint and entitled to be fully honored as such. 2. To include in the biblical canon. 3. by the studies of Northrop Frye: Robert Greene's Pandosto and Menaphon; Spenser's Faerie Queen (book 6); and Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest. Chapter 3, "Wit and Innocence," follows Longus into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Britain, Hardin discusses the rewriting of The Tempest by Davenant and Dryden; the poetry of Milton and Andrew Marvell (echoed in Hardin's title); and Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd. On the Continent, the idyllic romances flourish in Salamon Gessner's Daphnis (1754) and Idyllen (1756), and in Jean-Pierre Florian's Estelle (1787). Chapter 4, "Paul, Virginie, and George," shows how Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie Paul et Virginie (or Paul and Virginia) is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, first published in 1787. The novel's title characters are very good friends since birth who fall in love but sadly die when the ship "Le Saint-Geran" is shipwrecked. (1788) inaugurated a French tradition that flourished in nineteenth century works such as George Sand's romans champeres of the 1840s, Nerval's Sylvie (1853), and Mistral's narrative poem Mirceio (1859). Chapter 5, "Ladies of Maine," moves to the New World, examining Harriet Beecher Stowe's Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Sarah Orne Jewett's Marsh Island (1885) and Country of Pointed Firs (1896), Willa Gather's O Pioneers! (1913), Mary Ellen Chase's Uplands (1927), and Elisabeth Ogilvie's Waters on a Starry Night (1968). Chapter 6, "Spanish Idylls," examines the nineteenth-century Iberian revival of idyllic romance in Juan Valera's translation of Daphnis and Chloe (1879), his novel Pepita Jimenez (1874), and Emilia Pardo Bazan's La madre Naturaleza (1885). Chapter 7, "British Naturists," reviews works by Englishmen such as Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree Under the Greenwood Tree is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1872. Plot The plot concerns the activities of a group of church musicians, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a comely new school mistress, Fancy Day. (1872), W. H. Hudson's A Shepherd's Life (1910) and Green Mansions (1904), Henry De Vere Stacpoole's The Blue Lagoon (1908) and The Garden of God (1923). Chapter 8, "Innocence and Radical Innocence," surveys a number of New World romances from the early twentieth century: Lynn Riggs's Green Grow the Lilacs (1931), Robinson Jeffers's Loving Shepherdess (1929), Mary Austin's Isidro (1905), Harold Bell Wright's Shepherd of the Hills (1907), Mary Webb's Seven for a Secret (1922), Victoria Sackville-West's Green Wethers (1923), Jorge Isaac's Maria (1867), D. H. Lawrence's "England, My England" (1915), and Louis Hemon's Maria Chapdelaine (1913). In these works, Longus is generally a shadowy presence mediated by nineteenth-century fictions. Chapter 9, "Points of Departure," turns to Colette's Ble en herbe (1923), Ramon Perez de Ayala's Luna de miel, luna de hiel (1923), Yukio Mishima's Sound of Waves (1954), Genevieve Dormann's Le bal du dodo (1989), Trumans Capote's Grass Harp (1951), the French film Jeux interdits (1951), and Jo-Ann Mapson's Hank and Chloe (1993). As this litany of titles suggests, the canon of idyllic romances is extensive. Hardin's book is more an extended essay in comparative literature than a tidy history, and some readers may desire either a clearer chronology or a more focused analysis. Some aspects of this slippery genre -- its connections with popular "romance" and the role of female authors after George Sand -- call for further comment. And Hardin occasionally omits illuminating details, such as Proust's tribute to George Sand's Fran Francois le Champi in Du cote de chez chez prep. At the home of; at or by. [French, from Old French, from Latin casa, cottage, hut.] chez prep at the home of [French] Swann. Nevertheless, Hardin provides an often scintillating scin·til·late v. scin·til·lat·ed, scin·til·lat·ing, scin·til·lates v.intr. 1. To throw off sparks; flash. 2. To sparkle or shine. See Synonyms at flash. 3. mosaic of sources both primary and secondary; and an attractive invitation to read some lesser known works of fiction. |
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