田園、農村與土地利用：英國現代前期劇本中的地景變異

Field, Rural Settlement and Management of Land: The Changing Rural Landscapes in Early Modern English Dramas

凱斯．湯姆斯(Keith Thomas) 認為，人類文明是征服自然的代名詞。文明史上城市的建構經常代表經濟與文化的發展和田園自然的限縮；雖然人類崇敬神祇，並且歌誦自然，但精心雕琢的花園城堡一向是炫耀文明的策略。西洋文學的地景書寫可追溯至希臘羅馬時代，牧歌文類中所呈現的樂園意象是美學的展現，不過，田園地景的描述有時卻顯示農民的無奈，詩句中田園生活也經常成為逃避世俗想像的投射。文藝復興時期的文學地景常見於田園詩歌，扶萊思凱特(John Flasket)所編的《赫立孔山之靈泉》(England’s Helicon 1600)，集牧歌作品之大成，但克拉博(George Crabbe)之後，出版了許多以實際角度與社會批判的觀點來看待地景、農村生活和田園的變遷的十七世紀文學作品。這些作品不僅反應當時的反圈地運動的呼聲、刻劃了貴族所仰賴的農作和娛樂，而且批判了土地商品化所造成的貧富差異。有些戲劇作品更夾帶了諷刺手法，來批判地景所遭受的人為變異與新型社會價值觀。本篇論文將討論十七世紀初劇作家的作品，如《蘆筍園》(The Sparagus Garden)、《清理科芬園》(The Covent Garden Weeded) 和《償還舊債的新方法》(A New Way to Pay Old Debts)等。論文第一部份追溯維吉爾和中世紀、扶萊思凱特等文學地景文學中對土地和農民的關懷，論文的主體則分析三部文藝復興時期的戲劇作品，以審視劇作家所觀察的土地運用、地景的變易和其產生的社會現象。

To Keith Thomas, human civilization was synonymous with the conquest of nature (25). Thomas’s statement is true since the construction of the cities and towns in human civilizations mostly suggests economic growth and the decrease of nature’s territory. Pastoral poetry can be referred to Greek and Roman antiquity, but even in the Eclogues by Virgil, the poet reveals the anxieties caused by the deprivation of farmers’ land, and the praise of nature or landscape in literature sometimes implies escapism. The culmination of the cultural significance of pastoral poems is seen in England’s Helicon, an anthology compiled by John Flasket, but in the seventeenth-century dramas, the concern about the change of the landscape is found interrelated with social criticism. This essay is a study on the change of landscapes as represented in three early modern plays. The first part of the discussion refers to the concern with land as related to the peasants in the pastoral and landscape writing before the Renaissance period, while the second and the third parts cover the discussion on two plays, The Sparagus Garden and The Covent Garden Weeded, by Richard Brome and A New Way to Pay Old Debts by Philip Massinger.