Reading Virgil's Georgics as a Scientific Text: The Eighteenth-Century Debate between Jethro Tull and Stephen Switzer

Bruyn, Frans De

doi:10.1353/elh.2004.0035

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…In the fourth Georgic, Virgil writes of an old man who is at work on his small patch of land that was at one time not fertile enough to be plowed by oxen, but with his dedicated attention it has been transformed. The lines in this vignette are less didactic and more poetic in the sheer strength of the action and sensuality by use of vivid descriptions of the labor that is needed for all the seasons [ 88 ]. Quint [ 89 ] has proposed in his review of the new translations of Georgics by [ 86 ] and Lembke [ 90 ] that, “ the old gardener thus carries some of the poem's political hopes as well as its ethical message.…”

Section: How Does Your Garden Grow? Definitions History and Purpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gray and Green Revisited: A Multidisciplinary Perspective of Gardens, Gardening, and the Aging Process

Wright

Wadsworth

2014

Journal of Aging Research

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Over fourteen years ago, the concept of “gray and green” was first introduced by Wright and Lund (2000) to represent a new awareness and a call for increased scholarship at the intersection of environmental issues and the aging process. This review paper revisits that concept with a fresh perspective on the specific role of gardens and gardening in the aging experience. As example, gardening is one of the most popular home-based leisure activities in the US and represents an important activity in the lives of older adults in a variety of residential settings. Yet, there has been a lack of any comprehensive and multidisciplinary (science and humanities) examination of the nexus between gardening and the aging experience, and in particular with research connections to stewardship and caring. In this paper, we review contemporary articles demonstrating the multidisciplinarity of gardening and the aging process. First, we will focus on the beneficial psychological effects resulting from the cultivation of caring, including personal contentment and artistic expression. Second, we will focus on stewardship and how gardening increases health, community awareness, and a connection to future generations. On the surface, this may demonstrate a separation between the humanities and science, but we will clarify a symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines in our conclusion.

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Section: How Does Your Garden Grow? Definitions History and Purpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gray and Green Revisited: A Multidisciplinary Perspective of Gardens, Gardening, and the Aging Process

Wright

Wadsworth

2014

Journal of Aging Research

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“…Important prior spadework notwithstanding (Barrell, 1988;de Bruyn, 1997de Bruyn, , 2004de Bruyn, , 2005Low, 1985), the current condition of the critical landscape on eighteenth-century georgic is to a large extent the result of its cultivation by Juan Christian Pellicer and David Fairer. Both Pellicer and Fairer, by building on their earlier work (Pellicer, 2000(Pellicer, , 2003(Pellicer, , 2004(Pellicer, , 2006Fairer, 2003aFairer, , 2003bFairer, , 2005Fairer, , 2006 have provided further insights into why georgic proved such a conducive mode to so many of writers of the period (Fairer, 2011b(Fairer, , 2015(Fairer, , 2016Pellicer, 2012Pellicer, , 2018a.…”

Section: Georgicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent scholarship on classical literature and the eighteenth century

Calvert

2022

Literature Compass

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This article provides a survey of the scholarship on classical literature and eighteenth-century British literary culture that has appeared since 2010. Drawing on general overviews of the period, as well as more specific work on translation and classical reception, it focuses on the following five subject-areas: non-elite readers of classical literature; the status of Homeric epic; the relationship between classical literature, Celticism and the Gothic; Horatianism; georgic poetry. The article then addresses the classical authors, texts and genres from outside of these areas which have also recently received scholarly attention, and identifies further topics of enquiry which require examining to provide the fullest picture of the eighteenth century's engagement with the literature of antiquity.

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“…Frans De Bruyn has written extensively on the 'debate Virgil's poem occasioned' in the eighteenth century on 'the scientific or technical merit of the agricultural instructions it conveyed'. 10 Contemporary readers of the Georgics, he argues, 'were predisposed to make strong cognitive claims for the poem', 11 and writers of new agricultural treatises 'relied on the cultural imprimatur of Virgil in order to gain a friendly reception with the reading public'. 12 For De Bruyn, this readerly approach amounted to the construction of a ' "Virgilian discourse" of agricultural science'.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Mid‐Eighteenth‐Century Georgic and Agricultural Improvement

Bucknell¹

2013

J Eighteenth Century Stud

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During the eighteenth century the didactic precepts of Virgil's Georgics were read as practical guidance by an emerging class of professional farmers, and a set of original vernacular georgics were written on agricultural improvement. Examining Smart's The Hop-Garden, Dodsley's Agriculture, Dyer's The Fleece and Jago's Edge-Hill, I argue that they offer a confident, progressive and scientific approach to land cultivation, revising the inherited attitudes of Virgilian georgic. I suggest, though, that this poetics of improvement provides one reason for the decline of the georgic didactic tradition, as it becomes unable to offer comprehensive instruction on a specialised field of knowledge.

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Reading Virgil's Georgics as a Scientific Text: The Eighteenth-Century Debate between Jethro Tull and Stephen Switzer

Cited by 11 publications

References 16 publications

Gray and Green Revisited: A Multidisciplinary Perspective of Gardens, Gardening, and the Aging Process

Gray and Green Revisited: A Multidisciplinary Perspective of Gardens, Gardening, and the Aging Process

Recent scholarship on classical literature and the eighteenth century

The Mid‐Eighteenth‐Century Georgic and Agricultural Improvement

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