About this book
A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) by Thomas Purney announces itself as a provocative reassessment of the pastoral tradition from the vantage of early eighteenth-century England. In this extended critical essay, Purney interrogates what makes a poem "pastoral," weighing classical models such as Theocritus against contemporary Augustan practices and the sentimentalized countryside of his own day. He debates simplicity versus artifice, the moral and aesthetic purposes of shepherdic speech, and the formal conventions that distinguish genuine pastoral from mere rural ornamentation.
Framed by the literary currents of 1717—when poets and critics fiercely debated imitation, authenticity, and classical authority—Purney’s enquiry is at once a close consideration of poetic form and a polemic about taste. Though it left little mark on later critical theory, the essay survives as a rare, candid statement of one writer’s attempt to define and defend a genre central to the period’s poetics.
Ideal for listeners drawn to literary criticism, eighteenth‑century studies, and the history of genre, this nonfiction audiobook illuminates how ideas about nature, art, and truth shaped the pastoral and offers scholars, poets, and curious readers a fresh perspective on a long‑debated tradition.
