The Poet-Laborer: Poetry as Profession in Georgic Works, from Antiquity to America

This paper will examine the usefulness of Georgic genre, theme, and content as a self-referential metaphor for the generative labor of composition. I propose that this genre, which didactically presents poetry on agriculture... [ view full abstract ]

This paper will examine the usefulness of Georgic genre, theme, and content as a self-referential metaphor for the generative labor of composition. I propose that this genre, which didactically presents poetry on agriculture and rural labor, is a unique entrée into the poet’s career because it puts forth humankind’s most original labor as a metaphor for the poet’s earliest labor. My evaluation of poets writing in the georgic tradition will begin with Hesiod’s Works and Days and Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics in order that I might identify a formula according to which classical poets use the metaphor of rural labor to emphasize their careers. The second part of my analysis will examine poets of Early Modern England to identify ways in which they maintain or subvert the use that georgic served to classical poets. Specifically, I will present Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender as a pastoral poem which nevertheless incorporates georgic elements. My research will conclude with a study of the resurgence of georgic thought and values in the United States. I will examine the tension between otium and labor, especially in the works of Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, and Wendell Berry, with close attention to the relevant political climates that shaped each of these poet's relationship to agricultural life.