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University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Hfichigan This dissertaSon has been miciofilmed exactly as xecdved 69-6004 TAYLOR, Larry Eugene, 1939- PASTORAL AND AUn-PASTOBAL PATTERNS IN JOHN UPDIKE’S FICTION. The University of OMahomaj PhJ)., 1969 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, hfichigan LARRY EUGENE TAYLOR 1969 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE MIVERSITI OF OKLAHOM GRADUATE COLLEGE PASTORAL AND ANTI-PASTORAL PATTERNS IN JOHN UPDIKE'S FICTION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY LARRY EUGENE TAYLOR Norman, Oklahoma 1969 PASTORAL AND ANTI-PASTORAL PATTERNS IN JOHN UPDIKE'S FICTION APPROVED BY [TATION COMMITTEE ACKNOWLEDGMENT I extend my sincere and lasting gratitude to Professor Victor A. Elconin, who directed this study; to Professor David P. French, who patiently suggested stylistic emendations; to Professor A. J. Fritz, who has encouraged me in my work for many years. And I am especially grateful to Sally and Jeff, who bravely put up with me while I wrote it. I l l TABLE OF CONTENTS Page THESIS AND INTRODUCTION .......................................................... 1 Chapter I . THE PASTORAL AND ANTI-PASTORAL MODES................ 4 I I . VERSIONS OF PASTORAL AND ANTI-PASTORAL PATTERNS IN THE AMERICAN TRADITION................. 3k I I I . PRIMARY TENSIONS; EDEN AND THE FALL, SWAIN AND SOPHISTICATE, FARM AND TOWN IN UPDIKE’S EARLY WORKS..................................... 88 IV. RABBIT, RUN: AN ANTI-PASTORAL SATIRE .... 119 V. HE CENTAUR: EPIC PAEAN AND PASTORAL LAMENT.......................................................................... 143 VI. THE WIDE-HIPPED WIFE AND THE PAINTED LANDSCAPE: PASTORAL IDEALS IN OF THE FARM...................................................................... 167 V II. "FIELDS STILL STEEPED IN GRACE": IDYL AND IRONY IN W MUSIC SCHOOL......................... l82 V III. THE TARBOX "NYMPHS AND SATYRS": COUPLES AS A DIDACTIC ANTI-PASTORAL............................. 196 NOTES................................................................................................. 207 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................. 219 IV THESIS AND INTRODUCTION My thesis for this assay is that a strong current of the pastoral and anti-pastoral tradition and mode runs through the history of American fiction, that the tradition has not received adequate critical attention, and that the pattern has become increasingly important in the past three or four decades. Further, the pastoral (and the inescapably concomitant a n ti-p a s to ra l or m ock-pastoral) have become out­ standing formal and thematic modes of expression for several of the most important and sophisticated artists of our time. Among these more recent users are Saul Bellow, Ken Kesey, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, and, most prominently, John Barth and John Updike. In this paper I shall attempt to define, clarify, and examine in detail this pastoral mode as it is employed in the fiction of John Updike, the subtlest and, at the same time, the most obvious user of pastoral and anti-pastoral techniques. Thus, my aim is two-fold: (1) to examine a tradition, and (2) to show how that tradition works in the body of a particular author's art. BEy first aim, to trace a tradition, is the more difficult task, a little like the archaeologist's job of 1 2 sifting through geological strata where one city has been built upon the ruins of another over centuries. After all, I will be using terminology ("The Pastoral") which was originally used to describe literature which flourished in the third century B.C. Fortunately, both the reader and I w ill be invaluably a ssiste d by two im portant works in making the epic leap from Theocritus (c. 360 B.C.) to The Centaur (1963), to Of üie Farm (196$), to Couples (1968): the books are Some Versions of Pastoral, by William Empson (London, 193$), and The Pastoral Art of Robert Frost, by John F. Lynen (New Haven, I960). Both works essentially support my basic thesis about the pastoral and anti­ p asto ral modes. Empson’s book, so cio lo g ically and psycho­ logically oriented, asserts the existence of the pattern in British literature from the Renaissance to the latter part of the nineteenth century—from Shakespeare through Fielding to Lewis Carroll. Lynen's aesthetically oriented work pro­ vides an excellent general delineation of the pattern in American literature, and his application of his thesis to Robert Frost’s poetry is indispensable for reading Frost. However, neither book deals with American prose fiction; to my knowledge, no thorough treatment of the pastoral pat­ tern exists in this particular area. I hope, by this essay, to fill this important gap. Admittedly, in choosing the term pastoral to describe the patterns rather than, say, "agrarian," "return 3 to natiire," "transcendental," "rural," or "bucolic," I am placing myself outside the main stream of most recent criticism of American prose fiction. But I choose the term deliberately. And, to avoid being labeled what C. S. Lewis calls a "Stylemonger" (a critic who sees literature as nothing more than a series of pleasing styles and forms),^ I shall treat the pastoral and anti-pastoral not merely as a literary technique, but also as a significant theme. By significant, I mean that the pastoral in the American tra­ d itio n both means and is ; i t encompasses both a theme and a technique, a subject and an attitude toward the subject; it has psychological validity, as well as sociological and historical substance. At times, the pastoral and anti­ pastoral are, to be sure, mere conventions; at times, they are myths; almost always the patterns are metaphors. In tracing the tradition and as a way of introducing my topic, I will first examine the broad literary areas where the terms "pastoral" and "anti-pastoral" apply. I shall define my terms primarily through descriptions of well known works. Second, I shall trace the pattern as it has developed in America up to the present time. Third, I shall show how the tradition relates to John Updike's f ic tio n . PASTORAL AND ANTI-PASTORAL PATTERNS IN JOHN UPDIKE'S FICTION CHAPTER I THE PASTORAL AND ANTI-PASTORAL MODES Let us start at the beginning. Theocritus, the Third Century B.C. Greek poet, originated the pastoral form and manner. Although pastoralism has meant different things to different artists in the centuries since Theocritus, the mode has existed in e ith e r the serious or the iro n ic (mock) form down to the present time. When John Updike writes a short story about'jet-set adultery in a February, 1968, edition of The New Yorker and includes two lengthy, ita li­ cized, formally isolated, idyllically phrased lover's la­ ments, the reader is forced to recall similar tones and images from pastoral idylls: Oh Sally, my lost only Sally, let me say now, now before we both forget, while the spark still lives on the waterfall, that I loved you, that the sight of you shamed hqt eyes. You were a hyperbolic image of my worth. I would go to meet you as a knight, to rescue you, and would become instead the dragon, and rav ish you. You weighed me out in jewels, though ashes were what I could afford. .^ Oh Sally, it was such a beautiful ride! Do you re­ member at what a low altitude we flew? How our little plane, like a swan boat mildly bobbing in an occasional current, carried us through the middle air that was spangled with constellations above and cities below? I saw, past the halo of your sleeping hair, the capital's continent of light expand, tilt, and expand again; Dante could not have dreamed such a rose. Our DC-3, fetched from Heaven knows where to carry us home, was chilly—unheated, unpressurized; it was honest ether we inhaled. .3 Furthermore, while the adulterous couple in Updike's story take a respite from the harrowing ordeal of trying to get plane tickets during an airlines strike, they find a tiny cool patch of grass outside the terminal, where they ironically dream the pastoral dream: . Her toes felt cool out of her shoes, and her man regained his reality in the presence of air and grass. "I see us," he said, stretching his arm toward the distance, "in Wyoming, with your children, and a horse, and a cold little lake we can swim in, and a garden we can make near the house. That apostrophic and lyrical "Oh Sally, my lost only Sally" is an echo of "Ah, lovely Amaryllis, why no more, as of old, dost thou glance through this cavern after me, nor callest me, thy sweetheart, to thy side."^ Those "sparks on the waterfall," that "swan boat mildly bobbing," that "spangled middle air," that "halo of your sleeping hair," that "honest ether," are all ironic linguistic echoes of nothing short of the pastoral lover's lament, joined here in the lover's mind with echoes of medieval dragons, knights, and jewels. That horse and garden and cold little lake in %"oming are ironic linguistic and imagistic sign­ posts pointing the reader back through the centuries to 6 the springs and goats and gardens and horses of the Theocritan idyll. But the idyllic apostrophes and the pastoral dream of Wyoming are made striking and significant in the story because of their dramatic contrast to the pressure of the airport, the DC-3, the Hertz credit cards, the totally non­ pastoral setting and society. The adultery itself—messy, neurotic, tawdry as it is—contrasts to the freshness and simplicity of Corydon and Amaryllis' ideal love relation­ ship. The effect of irony relies on the technique of anti­ pastoral as surely as As You Like It relies on anti­ p a sto ra l. point is that in the 1960's the stories within the covers of The Hew Yorker, for instance, contain elements of the pastoral tradition as obvious as, say, those covers themselves.
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