- Digging the Past: How and Why to Imagine Seventeenth-Century Agriculture
- By Frances E. Dolan, distinguished professor of English
鈥淪he makes us welcome the difficult task of thinking harder about everything from plows to manure 鈥 and not as odd or quaint digressions, but as things surprisingly central to early modern and current conceptions of culture.鈥 鈥 Leah Knight, author of 鈥淩eading Green in Early Modern England鈥
Digging into writings and figurations and more on 17th-century agriculture, Fran Dolan shows in her new book how agricultural practices of that era are relevant to today. Or, as she put it in a recent blog post, 鈥渉ow the 17th century continues to shape both hands-on practice and popular anglophone ways of imagining and describing what farming should be and do.鈥
Dolan performed a good deal of her research using rare books in the 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis Library鈥檚 , according to a library news story. Her book features images drawn from three of those volumes:
- The cover art for Digging the Past is based on the title page of Walter Blith鈥檚 (1652). Read Dolan鈥檚 , discussing the meaning she sees in the original art and as it has been reimagined for the book cover.
- The frontispiece is from John Worlridge鈥檚 (1668).
- Other images are from John Gerard鈥檚 (1636).
鈥楢lternative agriculture鈥
According to the publisher, Dolan builds on and connects histories of food and work, literary criticism of the pastoral and georgic, histories of elite and vernacular science, and histories of reading and writing practices, among other areas of inquiry, to offer 鈥渇ine-grained case studies鈥 of agricultural projects heralded as innovations both in the 17th century and in our own time.
In her blog post, Dolan talks about drawing from Blith鈥檚 book, , in which he 鈥渆laborates on the initiatives that interest me, including planting green manures, composting and other forms of soil amendment, cultivating hedgerows, and eating and drinking 鈥榣ocal.鈥欌
鈥淧romoted as innovations then, they are once again prominent alternative or sustainable agriculture projects,鈥 she said. 鈥淥n these topics, past and present can speak to one another.鈥
Indeed, as she tracks figurations, such as feeding the hungry earth or seeing wine as the 鈥渂lood of the grape,鈥 across time and place, she shows how 鈥渙ur imaginations and figural language are informed by the 17th century,鈥 as she put it in her blog post.
Says the publisher: 鈥淭his book approaches the 17th century, in its failed proposals and successful ventures, as a resource for imagining the future of agriculture in fruitful ways. It invites both specialists and nonspecialists to see and appreciate the period from the ground up.鈥