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Pastoral Representations in Select Works of Robert Frost

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Pastoral Representations in Select Works of Robert Frost Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 4. 2018 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (Oct-Dec) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) RESEARCH ARTICLE PASTORAL REPRESENTATIONS IN SELECT WORKS OF ROBERT FROST K.R.VIDHYA Assistant Professor, Department of English, VISTAS ABSTRACT Pastoral art of narrative style has played pivotal role in major works of Robert frost. This art of writing emerged a beautiful way of narrative technique to narrate the simple rural lifestyle. Frost art of pastoral technique captives the readers both literally and figuratively, his longingness for nature, modifies his idea of living and surviving. He stressed out that survival or living should be the purest form one could ask for in this world. With all this abundant beauty of nature; human should alter the form of living by endowing with all kindness and honest. This article revived selected poems of frost and his art of pastoral writing and concluding with the idea that emotional attachment of the author’s personal life has turned him to believe in nature more than trusting human race. INTRODUCTION country and in particular the life of a shepherd. The second type of the pastoral literature is that it The word pastoral has been employed to describes the country with an implicit or explicit designate a distinct species of literature but when contrast to the urban and the third type of pastoral viewed alternately as a genre, mode, or convention depicts the country life with derogative in any literary expressions, it refers tothe tradition classifications. of a lineage of creative works that idealize rural life and landscapes. Thus, pastoral is a mode of ORIGIN OF THE ART literature in which the writer employs various Pastoral poetry was professed to be a techniques to place the complex life into a simple portrayal of rural life; therefore, it is necessary to one. examine the methods used by various poets in Paul Alpersin his book what is pastoral depicting pastoral element. It flourished most distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a vigorously in the age of Theocritus and Virgil among genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring the ancients, and during the Renaissance in modern attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral times. But with the passing of time pastoral poetry literature holds a humble perspective toward lost its naturalness and simplicity, and became nature. Pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of artificial and conventional. The unhappy shepherd, literature (poetry, drama, etc.) as well as genres the fair shepherdess, the wandering flock, (most notably the pastoral elegy). the daisies and violets, the dance on the village green, the flowery wreath, and the oaten pipe, all Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, came to be regarded as the essential part of the defines pastoral in three ways in his critical pastoral, and were used by one poet after another, book Pastoral. The first way emphasizes the as the conventional decor of their poems. historical literary perspective of the pastoral in which authors recognize and discuss life in the 288 K.R.VIDHYA Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 4. 2018 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (Oct-Dec) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) Pastoral literature continued after Hesiod At the age of ten Frost was brought from with the Poetry of the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus San Francisco, his birthplace, to New England, where several of whose Idylls are set in the countryside and eight generations of his family had been rooted. involve dialogues between herdsmen. Italian poets Since then New England was his home, and he revived the pastoral from the 14th century onwards, became its best poetic interpreter. At 19, frost first in Latin then in the Italian vernacular. The asked his skeptical grandfather for 20-year fashion for pastoral continued to spread throughout apprenticeship to poetry. He was a canny prophet, Renaissance Europe. in that time he published less than 20 poems and earned little from them. The formal English pastoral continued to flourish during the 18th century, eventually dying In England, however, he found ready and out at the end. During this time period Ambrose perceptive appreciation among the Georgian poets. Phillips, who is often overlooked because of Pope, The praise of English reviewers opened American modeled his poetry after the Native English form of eyes; returning to America at the age of 40, Frost Pastoral, employing it as a medium to express the was hailed by Ezra pound and other sponsors of the true nature and longing of Man. He strove to write ‘New Poetry’ by editors and by publishers. Since in this fashion to conform to what he thought was then his steady but unhurried production received the original intent of Pastoral literature. As such, he its deserved recognition. In 1912 he settled in centered his themes on the simplistic life of the England with his wife and four children determined Shepherd, and, personified the relationship that to write poetry without further scandal to friends or humans once had with nature.Therefore, that were family. used by all the predecessors were either realistic Following the first two volumes, his most based on observation or idealistic based on important books areMountain Interval (1916), New imagination. Hampshire (1923) West Running Brook (1928), However, Frost's poetry is entirely free Collected Poems (1930-1939), A Further Range from such conventional and artificial elements. He (1936), A Witness Tree (1942), A Masque of Reason has succeeded in capturing the simplicity and (1945), A Steeple Bush (1947), A Masque of Mercy naturalness of the earliest Greek masters of this (1947), Complete Poems (1949). form. The greatness of Frost as a pastoral poet has Much of frost’s poetry is a new kind of been universally recognized. The bulk of his ‘pastoral’, versed in country things, with senses alert poetry deals with rural life. One has simply to glance to the object, builds slowly from observation to through Frost's Collected Poems to form an idea of symbolic meaning. Birches starting with a lonely the importance of rural life in the poetry of Frost. boy’s diversion, tells of the charm of escapism and Born on 26th March 1874, four-time the needed return to earth; Mending Wall tells of Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost is no stranger to tradition bound exclusiveness; Stopping by Woods even the most casual reader of poetry. The poet on Snowy Evening sets absorption in the dark immortalized nature, seasons and landscapes in his loveliness of the woods against the promises that work. His poetry straddles two different worlds – man must keep. The Cow in Apple Time, the one that held the traditions of a century gone by Runaway, and Mowing are other examples of and the other, that was about modern views and precise sense impressions built up to revelations of ways that were infiltrating American poetry at that man. However suggestive, is always separate from time. But he was in no rush to embrace the man. contemporary style of writing. He stuck to what he To call Robert Frost a pastoral poet is at had tried and found true, albeit with ideas of his once to say too much and too little. Frost himself own. He wrote both in rhyme and free verse, said that “he first heard the speaking voice in poetry showing a fondness for the former form. in Virgil’s eclogues”. Virgil’s ten eclogues are models of pastoral poetry, dialogues or monologues of 289 K.R.VIDHYA Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 4. 2018 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (Oct-Dec) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) shepherds dwelling in a mythic arcadia, a land of shepherd or a love affair that has gone wrong. The innocence and beauty. Ezra Pound shrewdly called contrast between man and nature is brought out. frost’s poems modern georgics. He was referring to Though the poets write about nature, the subject is Virgil’s four didactic poems about farm work that humanity. The countryside is idealized, since writers form the basis of a tradition that stands in contrast of the genre are usually city people. Portrayal of to pastoral; it is a type of didactic poetry extolling average human experience takes place by projecting hard labor and a scientific approach to nature. it into a world remote and district life – Arcadia. There is always a desire to withdraw from the world Pastoral is a rich and complex tradition. Not and human struggle. The language generally used in only a genre or set of conventions, it is often a mode ancient pastoral poetry was figurative but later the by which authors from Theocritus and Virgil to language of the common man came into use. Dante and Milton as well as Wordsworth and Thoreau have explored questions of human equality, If we adhere to strict definitions the frost man’s place in nature, and the nature of faith. If by definitely appears out of place: his landscapes are pastoral one means a mode that emphasizes the often barren, his shepherds seem to be rather tough beauty and simplicity of country life, then frost’s farmers, and contemplation always appears poetry seems decidedly dissonant. But frost’s threatened and mingled with hard labor.This does dissonant renewal of this ancient tradition allowed not mean that Frost is satirizing the pastorals, if we him to explore complex, modern attitudes about recognize that pastoral literature has been filled democracy, science, and faith.
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