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Georgic Rhetoric, Virtue And The Commercialization Of Agriculture In Pennsylvania From 1785 To 1870, Naomi Ulmer
Georgic Rhetoric, Virtue And The Commercialization Of Agriculture In Pennsylvania From 1785 To 1870, Naomi Ulmer
Masters Theses, 2010-2019
This research examines how farmers in Pennsylvania between 1785 and 1870 were persuaded by georgic agrarianism to take social, economic and even moral risks to abandon a semi-subsistence mode of production in favor of commercial production. The georgic rhetoric is derived from Virgil’s poem “The Georgics.” It discusses agriculture and man’s labor in nature. Virgil discusses the relationship between man, nature and his ability, or inability, to control nature to ensure his own survival. Beginning in the late 18th century, supporters of improved agriculture, mostly wealthy and upper-class gentlemen, tried to persuade common yeomen farmers to produce for the …