George Crabbe's The Village has long been seen as a response to the florid pastoral poetry of the late 18th century, a genre marked by its praise of the countryside and simple lives. shepherds and peasants. Indeed, Crabbe presents his dreary country village and the bleak existence of its rural poor using the same types of literary devices endemic to traditional pastoral, suggesting his intention to ridicule this often misguided species of poetry. However, to analyze The Village as a mere parody is to ignore the heavy social implications of the poem, which is ingenious in its employment of rhetorical strategies that appeal to both the intellect and emotions of its audience. By wresting ownership of the countryside from the poet's hands, allowing the reader to explore the landscape with his imagination, and twisting traditional pastoral devices for his own use, Crabbe creates a powerful argument for the immediacy of the plight of the rural poor.2E Crabbe's portrait of rural poverty in The Village clearly goes beyond mere parody of the genre of pastoral poetry, appealing to the reader's conscience so that he or she can sympathize with the social ills of the peasant class or even actively work to relieve them. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get an original essayThe first major strategy Crabbe employs to force the reader to reconsider his views on rural life is to separate the pastoral poet from the peasant. From the beginning of The Village, Crabbe wrests ownership of the pastoral from the poets who idealize it: “Yes, thus the Muses sing of the happy married couple, / Because the Muses never knew their sorrows” (21-22). We must understand that those who idealize the countryside and those who reside in it live in separate worlds, and the pleasant vision that traditional pastoral poetry gives us ignores the harsh reality of rural poverty. Crabbe continues by emphasizing the different worlds by contrasting the poet's depiction of carefree country life and the reality of grim peasant labor. He writes: “They boast of their peasant pipes; but the peasants now / abandon their pipes and work hard behind the plow” (23-24). Here, the faint sound of the “p” consonants of “peasant” and “pipes” transform into the looming drumbeat of “plod” and “plough,” revealing a clear break between the worlds of the poet and the peasant. Furthermore, Crabbe creates a distance between the poet and the peasant by illustrating the absurdity of a poet even trying to speak to a poor rural laborer: "Can poets soothe you, when you hunger for bread, / In wrapping myrtles around your crumbling shed? / Can their light tales your heavy sorrows overtake you, or do you rejoice with airy joy during the painful hour? " Clearly, "airy cheerfulness" is outside the language of those facing "heavy sorrows", and traditional pastoral poetry is therefore incapable of communicating with or for the peasants it claims to represent. Crabbe goes so far as to accuse poets who create false images of peasant life of hypocrisy, suggesting that they personally despise the people they claim to glorify. He writes: “Oh! joke not with desires you cannot feel, / Nor mock the misery of a restricted meal; / Simple, not healthy, simple, not copious, such / As you who praise would never deign to touch” (168-71). That such elitist poets choose to falsely exalt a class of people with whom they would not personally associate is beyond hypocritical, arguesCrabbe, but ultimately insulting and cruel. But Crabbe is not content to analyze the pastoral poet and his subject from the outside. Suddenly speaking directly to his audience, Crabbe challenges the reader to imaginatively explore a country house with his speaker and identify the source of the carefree pastoral feeling. You, gentle souls, who dream of rural comfort, Whom the gentle flow and the sweeter sonnet please; Come on ! if the peaceful share your praise, go look within and ask if there is peace; if peace is his, this tired and falling father; the brand that expires! (172-79) This stanza is effective because it forces the reader to imaginatively place themselves in the world of the pastoral poem, actively confronting the images of a miserable horse, poor cold children huddled around a fire and their sick mother. These shocking portraits contrast sharply with the "rural ease" sought by the pastoral poet and make the reader feel that he or she is personally part of the process of discovery. Crabbe's involvement of the reader in discovering the truth allows for the kind of moment of epiphany that is necessary for a real change in attitudes and beliefs. Crabbe further gains a measure of authority by allowing the reader to confront the moral decision of how he should treat things. with the reality of pastoral poverty. He writes: "When, in the midst of such pleasant scenes, I trace / The poor laboring natives of the place, / ... While some, with weaker heads and hearts, / Deplore their fortune, while maintaining their part / So will I dare to hide these true evils / In the garlands of poetic pride? (41-48). Here Crabbe allows the reader to imagine himself as a poet deciding whether to propagate the false but satisfying pastoral aesthetic described as "tinsel traps" or whether to honestly confront the "real evils." At this point in the poem we already understand the importance of addressing rural poverty in a direct way, but, by allowing us to make the decision imaginatively, Crabbe allows the reader to own such beliefs. Another tactic Crabbe employs is to twist the standard devices of pastoral poetry to convince us of the seriousness of rural poverty. Even the most basic satire in The Village is infused with social consciousness. An example occurs when Crabbe mocks the pastoral poet's process of describing various flora and fauna, a process usually used to create an image of serenity and peace in the countryside. Crabbe Village, however, is populated with dreary weeds that seem to tear and claw at each other. "There the poppies shake their heads, mocking the hope of labor, / There the blue viperina paints the barren ground; / Robust and tall, above the slender sheaf, / The viscous mauve shakes its silky leaf; / On the young shoot that the charlock throws a shadow, / And the tares cling to the sickly blade", writes Crabbe (71-76). These plants do more than refute pastoral poetry's implication that the beauty of the countryside is universal, but provide a metaphor for the plight of the small peasant. The fact that the image of the mallow vainly lifting its leaf while the blue viperine looks down from above is juxtaposed with images of the endless work of the peasants suggests a symbolic role for these plants, illustrating the real contempt of the rich for the suffering . rural poor. The human characters who populate the village of Crabbe are presented as simple people, but are certainly not imbued with the carefree nature and folk virtues that one might expect from a traditional pastoral poem. Crabbe describes the inhabitants of his village in animal terms, employing.