Abstract/Summary

This book chapter argues that the concept of the 'rural idyll', although widespread in scholarly and popular discourse, obscures more than it reveals. Representations of the rural have, in virtually all times and places, been a complex mix of positive and negative elements. Furthermore, the way the rural has been represented, and what has been celebrated about it, has varied enormously across time and space. The 'rural idyll' concept obscures these distinctions, implying quite falsely that a particular positive conception of the countryside persisted over centuries, detached from and effectively independent of underlying changes in the economic, social, political and cultural context.