Title
Spending Time With Shepherds
Document Type
Article
Department or Administrative Unit
English
Publication Date
Summer 2010
Abstract
As the distance between our rural past and our techno present widens, so does the ignorance about how that quaint old world works, how it feels and smells, how to use the language crucial to a description of it. If your hands are daily dirtied by the facts of husbandry, by plowing, planting, cultivating, and irrigating, by performing the thousands unclean acts to keep things growing and healthy and profitable, then you have a different view of nature and rural life than one whose relation is more theoretical, descriptive, and remote. Of course, all description has an agenda, serving some sentiment or painterly background function; however, if we misname things or crudely stereotype them, the effect is generally lost, the illusion broken, and instead of authentic context out of which the emotions spring, there can be comedy and pathos. This disconnect is causing problems with authenticity in contemporary writing about the rural world.
Recommended Citation
Powell, Joseph. "Spending Time with Shepherds." The Midwest Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4, 2010, pp. 339-351.
Journal
The Midwest Quarterly
Rights
Copyright 2010 Pittsburg State University
Comments
This article was originally published in The Midwest Quarterly.
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