Pastoral Authority

We are “label eaters”; we eat “storied food.” In agricultural and literary history, the food label is a central medium, the pastoral a central genre. Revisiting the pastoral through William Empson’s influential theory and through science and technology studies, this essay argues that the pastoral covertly legitimates authority by overtly mediating nature. It was refined during the consummation of agricultural improvement, or romanticism, by authors such as Arthur Young, William Wordsworth, and Fredrick Accum. This revised theory of the pastoral genre facilitates an examination of today’s “clean label” trend as part of a broader coalescence of populism and technocracy.