Document Actions

IPP Workshop Series: Arcadia in the Anthropocene: An Introduction to the Concept of Pastoral (Stefano Rozzoni)

When

Nov 10, 2020 from 02:00 to 04:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC100)

Where

online (Webex)

Contact Name

Add event to calendar

iCal

“Pastoralism is a species of cultural equipment that western thought has for more than two millennia been unable to do without”

Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination


This workshop aims to offer a general overview of the concept of ‘pastoral’, its meaning(s), and its ethical implications with a particular focus on the way in which it relates to issues of human/nonhuman relationship, in alignment with the environmental discourses prompted by the Anthropocene.

More specifically, during the workshop, some of the core features of the pastoral aesthetic deriving from Ancient Greek and Latin literature will be discussed as still-dominant trends in the present-day world: attention will be paid to the many references to the pastoral in contemporary culture, including literature, media, advertisement and videogames. Attention will be also dedicated to how the idea of pastoral has contributed – and still contributes – to influence the perception and the conceptualization of the natural world in the Western thought. 

This session also wishes to highlight some of the most significant interpretative approaches to this subject in the field of literary criticism, in order to enhance a more pluralistic and critical perspective on it. In this regard, the concept of pastoral will be discussed as a useful navigational tool to reflect on possible models of ethical relationality between the human and the environment, in response to the current ecological crisis.

 

This workshop will be accessible five minutes before 14:00 through the following link:

https://uni-giessen.webex.com/meet/ipp20-21

 

Note: The sessions of the IPP Workshop Series are open for BA, MA and PhD students and the participants do not require any previous knowledge to take part.

 

Suggested Bibliography (not required): 

- Gifford, Terry. 1999. Pastoral. London: Routledge.

- Ruff, Allan R. 2015. Arcadian Visions: Pastoral Influences on Poetry, Painting and the Design of Landscape. Oxford: Windgather Press.

- Garrard, Greg. 2004. “Pastoral”. In Ecocriticism. London: Routledge. pp. 37-65.

 

// Stefano Rozzoni (GCSC)