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''The Deserted Village'' is a poem by Oliver Goldsmith published in 1770. It is a work of social commentary, and condemns rural depopulation and the pursuit of excessive wealth. The location of the poem's deserted village is unknown, but the description may have been influenced by Goldsmith's memory of his childhood in rural Ireland, and his travels around England. The poem is written in heroic couplets, and describes the decline of a village and the emigration of many of its residents to America. In the poem, Goldsmith criticises rural depopulation, the moral corruption found in towns, consumerism, enclosure, landscape gardening, avarice, and the pursuit of wealth from international trade. The poem employs, in the words of one critic, "deliberately precise obscurity", and does not reveal the reason why the village has been deserted. The poem was very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also provoked critical responses, including from other poets such as George Crabbe. References to the poem, and particularly its ominous "Ill fares the land" warning, have appeared in a number of other contexts. == Background == Goldsmith grew up in the hamlet of Lissoy in Ireland.〔Dussinger 2004.〕 In the 1760s, Goldsmith travelled extensively around England, visiting many small settlements.〔Batey 1968, p. 120.〕 In this period, the enclosure movement was at its height.〔Lutz 1998, p. 175.〕 The poem is dedicated to the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds and Goldsmith were close friends, and were both founding members, along with Samuel Johnson, of a dining society called The Club. Reynolds had helped to promote Goldsmith's play ''The Good-Natur'd Man'' to the actor and theatre manager David Garrick, and had facilitated Goldsmith's appointment as the historian of the Royal Academy.〔 ''The Deserted Village'' condemns rural depopulation and the indulgence of the rich. This was a subject that Goldsmith had tackled in his earlier poem ''The Traveller; or a Prospect of Society'' (1764), which also condemned the corrupting influence of extreme wealth. Goldsmith also set out his ideas about rural depopulation in an essay entitled "The Revolution in Low Life", published in ''Lloyd's Evening Post'' in 1762. There is no single place which has been identified as the village of the poem's title. While personal references in the poem give the impression of referring to the village in which Goldsmith grew up, the poem has also been associated with Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire. In "The Revolution in Low Life", Goldsmith had condemned the destruction of a village within of London in order to construct a fashionable landscape garden. Goldsmith reported that he had personally witnessed this scene in 1761.〔 In the same year, Nuneham Courtenay was removed to make way for Nuneham Park. Its owner—Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt—moved the village away.〔Batey 1968, p. 111.〕 There are a number of other concordances between Nuneham Courtenay's destruction and the contents of the ''The Deserted Village''. At Nuneham Courtenay, only an old woman was allowed to remain living in her house—Goldsmith's poem features an old woman who returns to the village, and she is depicted on the title page of the first edition. The position of both villages, on a hill near a river, was similar, and both had parsons who enjoyed gardening.〔Batey 1968, pp. 121–4.〕 However, Robert Seitz has argued that while "The Revolution in Low Life" greatly strengthens the case for identifying the deserted village as English, Goldsmith saw in this unnamed village "only what he wished to see", using it to fit a set of political and social ideas which were "made up largely of elements absorbed in Ireland".〔Seitz 1937, p . 408.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Deserted Village」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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