关键词: 乔治·克莱布; 村庄; 市镇; 圈地运动; 田园批评; 城市批评

Abstract:

The enclosure movement, which reached its peak during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain, had a dramatic effect on the ecological system and the lives of people in rural areas. Two of George Crabbe’s poems, The Village and The Borough, are representative of rural writing in Britain at the turn of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, Crabbe adopts an anti-pastoral mode to reveal the reality of rural poverty resulting from the ever-expanding enclosure movement. His work is different from that of the Neoclassicist pastoral poets’ merry representations of pastoral scenes, as well as from that of sentimentalist poets’ images of the “good old days”. By adopting the perspective of the relationship between the enclosure movement and the two selected poems, this paper will investigate the reasons for the ecological deterioration in rural areas, the uneven distribution of wealth, the moral degradation in the countryside, and the expanding impact of the enclosure movement, which led to the polarization of social classes and corruption in politics. Unfortunately, Crabbe’s name remains unknown to most readers today, largely due to the difficulty in identifying his achievements as a result of him not being associated with any particular literary school. In fact, certain types of critical realism pervade Crabbe’s poems, particularly his criticisms of the enclosure movement, although his attacks on this movement are indirect. The present paper also mentions the phenomena of peasants being pirates and village prostitutes, as well as fake elections and the description of early workhouses in Britain, which have significance for the study of history to some extent. Furthermore, since George Crabbe is not well known in China, it is hoped that this paper will increase Chinese scholars’ interest in Crabbe and inspire a new approach to the study of Crabbe’s work.

Keywords: George Crabbe; The Village; The Borough; enclosure movement; rural criticism; urban criticism