San Antonio College Library

In an era of often uncritical optimism, Hardy looked upon mankind with dark brooding wisdom. He dared to speak of sexual conflict of man's self-destructiveness, of grotesque mischance. Today his skepticism, his narrative inventiveness, and hostility to realism, and his psychological insight make him a congenial, even contemporary voice.

"What has the city meant to Americans? James L. Machor explores this question in a provocative analysis of American responses to urbanization in the context of the culture's tendency to valorize nature and the rural world. Although much attention has been paid to American rural-urban relations, Machor focuses on a dimension largely overlooked by those seeking to explain American conceptions of the city. While urban historians and literary critics...

The author concentrates his analysis on two related themes. The first, the politics of pastoral, analyzes the use of this genre by established writers such as Wordsworth and Janet Austen, and poets such as John Clare and Robert Bloomfield. His second theme, the theatre of politics, introduces the reader to some of the main polical events of the period which concludes with an analysis of Shelley's political writings and a discussion of Byron's political...

Pastoral literature is examined in light of the agricultural and industrial changes in American economics during the turn of the century, as small family farms in the latter half of the nineteenth century evolved into larger agribusiness conglomerates.