God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660

by Andrew McRae

• ISBN13: 9780521524667
• ISBN10: 0521524660
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-12
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book presents a fresh view of crucial processes of change, offering through an interdisciplinary analysis fresh insights into both the history and literature of the land in early modern England. It examines a wide range of source material concerned with the practices and values of rural England--sermons, pamphlets, satiric verse and drama, husbandry and surveying manuals, chorographic texts, and rural poetry. It traces important developments in patterns of representation, which at once parallel and promote the nation's shift toward modern standards of individualism and mercantilism.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	x
Acknowledgements	xii
Conventions	xiv
List of abbreviations	xv
Introduction	1	(20)
PART I VERSIONS OF MORAL ECONOMY	21	(112)
Covetousness in the countryside: agrarian complaint and mid-Tudor reform	23	(35)
Moral economics and the Tudor--Stuart Church	58	(22)
The rural vision of Renaissance satire	80	(30)
Agrarian communism	110	(23)
PART II IMPERATIVES OF IMPROVEMENT	133	(96)
Husbandry manuals and agrarian improvement	135	(34)
'To know one's own': the discourse of the estate surveyor	169	(29)
Georgic economics	198	(31)
PART III THE PROFITS AND PLEASURES OF THE LAND	229	(71)
Chorography: the view from the gentleman's seat	231	(31)
Rural poetics	262	(38)
Bibliography of primary sources	300	(19)
Index	319