{"product_id":"plowswords-literature-and-the-agricultural-trap-from-shakespeare-to-coetzee-9780813951621","title":"Plowswords: Literature and the Agricultural Trap from Shakespeare to Coetzee","description":"\u003cb\u003eA critical examination of the 'agricultural trap' in literature\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e For thousands of years, agriculture and civilization were essentially synonymous. The superiority of farming over the unsettled, itinerant life of hunting and gathering appeared, to many, self-evident. Only recently has the field of anthropology challenged this assumption by positing that foragers were, and are, actually happier and healthier than people living in agro-cultures. \u003ci\u003ePlowswords\u003c\/i\u003e is the first work to consider the refiguring of the agricultural revolution into the agricultural trap through a literary lens. Reading texts that depict farmers in conflict with foragers, Cates Baldridge argues that agricultural ideology justified the tedium and toil of farming by enlisting a rhetorical foil: the \"savage\" and \"backward\" hunter-gatherer. Texts such as \u003ci\u003eThe Tempest\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eRobinson Crusoe\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFrankenstein\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWuthering Heights\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHeart of Darkness\u003c\/i\u003e, and the novels of J. M. Coetzee use this figure either to exalt farming's triumph over foraging or to mourn the consequences of the agricultural turn, anxiously championing or stridently challenging the received wisdom of humanity's supposed progress.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCates Baldridge\u003c\/b\u003e is Philip Battell and Sarah F. Cowles Stewart Professor of English at Middlebury College and the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Dialogics of Dissent in the English Novel\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Virginia Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50911496241426,"sku":"9780813951621","price":126.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f68e2f79-f742-4e21-923b-38d18281e879.jpg?v=1738745340","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/plowswords-literature-and-the-agricultural-trap-from-shakespeare-to-coetzee-9780813951621","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}