Ideologies of the Countryside

By offering a complete analysis of the portrayal of rural landscape in Aristophanes’ comedies from 427 BC to 421 BC, this paper aims to study the idealization which the poet used to represent the countryside from Acharnians to Peace. The countryside appears as a place which the countrymen, forced to stay in Athens’ walls, struggle to go back to. Conversely, Athens is portrayed as a city of war and an unhealthy place to live in. The countryside is evoked on the scene as a place of Athenian memory where men had been living in peace for centuries. Consequently, the Athenian countryside represents peace while the city embodies the concept of war. Since peace with Sparta has not been reached yet, the scene of Aristophanes’ first comedies is the city. This is why the country landscape can only be evoked. The manner in which Aristophanes achieved representation is the literary traditional motif of laus vitae rusticae.

In 2006, the Chinese central government abolished the agricultural tax. This came after several years of intense focus on the growing rural crisis, sparking a new debate on the shape of rural society. Putting these contemporary debates in the context of 100 years of rural governance reforms, this paper argues that contemporary rural advocates find themselves in a situation similar to that of the first half of the twentieth century, and their reimagination of rural governance draws on the ideas of that time as well. It focuses on the contemporary visions for rural reform of Xu Yong, Dang Guoying, Yu Jianrong, Wu Licai, Li Changping, Cao Jinqing and He Xuefeng.