Pastoral Histories: Utopia, Conquest, and the Wife of Bath's Tale

Abstract

In The Country and the City Raymond Williams offers a moving critique of the ideology of the pastoral mode. Reading the material history embedded in the use of images of country and city, Williams tells a powerful story of the capture of land, people, and things for capitalism, and of the alienation that results. In so doing Williams poignantly reminds us that commodification and consumption are neither the only nor the most satisfying desires and ambitions that we might have for the world.

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