Ecocritical Perspectives on Contemporary Georgic Literature

 Event 

Ecocritical Perspectives on Contemporary Georgic Literature

Are books about rewilding the new form of georgic literature for the twenty-first century?

When Virgil wrote his genre-defining text, the Georgics, in the third decade BCE his poem focused on husbandry’s need to tune in to nature in order to produce food sustainably. Our century has seen not only a crop of new translations of the Georgics, but new varieties of contemporary georgic literature, including, perhaps, books that apparently advocate the abandonment of husbandry altogether. Can ecocritical perspectives offer insights into cultural debates about farming, gardening and food in a pandemic?

About the speaker

Professor Terry Gifford, a co-founder of British ecocriticism, is Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Environmental Humanities, BSU and Professor Honorifico at the Universidad de Alicante, Spain. He is the author of Pastoral (2nd edn 2020), Green Voices (2nd edn 2011), Reconnecting with John Muir: Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice (2006) and author, editor or co-editor of seven books on Ted Hughes, most recently Ted Hughes in Context (2018). He is Chair of the Ted Hughes Society. His eighth collection of poetry is A Feast of Fools (2018). Two essays on georgic literature are forthcoming.