Agriculture Dwelling The Georgic Tradition and Animal Studies
- Slides: 13
Agriculture, ”Dwelling”, The Georgic Tradition and Animal Studies Literature and Nature University of Helsinki/ Comparative Literature 4. 11. 2014 M. A. Pekka Raittinen
Hesiod: Works and Days � Lived circa 650 to 750 BC. in the hamlet of Ascra, near Mount Helicon � Also Theogony, ”The genealogy or birth of the gods” � Erga kai hamerai; socalled didactic poetry and the annual labours of the farmer
Hesiod’s life lessons to his ”prodigal brother”: ” But do you at any rate, always remembering my charge, work, high-born Perses, that Hunger may hate you, and venerable Demeter richly crowned may love you and fill your barn with food; for Hunger is altogether a meet comrade for the sluggard. Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labour of the bees, eating without working; […]”
A Farmer’s Year; Cycle of the Seasons: ”When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising , begin your harvest, and your ploughing when they are going to set”
Virgil: Georgics Hexameter epic, four books � Like Hesiod, V. stresses the importance of hard work � Roman agriculture and animal husbandry ; olive gardens, forests, fruits etc. � Idealized society of bees versus the political chaos preceding the Octavian age �
The Georgic Tradition � In 18 th century English literature � Thomas Jefferson: Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) � James Thompson: The Seasons (1793) � ”The Bean Field” chapter of Thoreu’s Walden � Wendell Berry
The Georgic Tradition in Finland? � The trope of ”the good peasant” beginning with J. L. Runeberg’s Farmer Paavo (Saarijärven Paavo) � Aleksis Kivi’s Seitsemän veljestä and poetry � Arvid Järnefelt � Free yeoman versus the smallholder
”Dwelling” => [to] dwell � 1. If you dwell on something, especially unpleasant, you think, speak, or write about it for a long time. ’I’d rather not dwell on the past’, he told me. � 2. If you dwell somewhere, you live there, a formal use. Shiva is a dark god; he dwells in the mountains and deserts. � 3. See also dwelling. =>
Dwelling =a = building or other place to live in; place of residence; abode. � In ecocritical context connotates not only habitation, but also a deeper connection to ”the land” � Agriculture, ancestry, tradition etc. � The discontinuity of the modern age=> We can no longer know, where we are to be be buried
Heidegger’s ”Dwelling” � ”On the Origin of the Work of Art” (1935) � Bauen = ”to build” � Van Gogh’s A Pair of Shoes; belongs to ”the earth” and ”the world” � Criticism: Heidegger’s thought and Blud und Boden ideology of the Nazi party
The Ecological Indian (Greg Garrard) � “The Georgic model of dwelling is of diminishing relevance for most North Americans and Europeans. ” (Garrard) � Idealized version of Native Americans in popular culture et al. � Animistic worldview and relation to nature
Animal studies �A new(ish) field of study in the humanities and social sciences � Peter Singer (1975): Animal Liberation � Animal versus human � Domestic versus wild animals
Donna Haraway (1991) ’A Cybord Manifesto´ Man versus machine contra man versus animal?
- The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us
- The fastest land dwelling creature is the cheetah
- Dp-2 broad form coverage
- Priestly golden head plate
- Moderately priced dwelling unit
- Dwelling of the holy spirit
- How lovely is thy dwelling place psalm 84
- Behold the tabernacle of god is with man
- Luminal flagellates
- Connotation for home
- Paradigm shift from women studies to gender studies
- Plant and animal cells venn diagram
- Animal rights versus animal welfare
- Culture and tradition of kerala