Misplaced Pages

#380619

101-466: The Gentle Shepherd is a pastoral comedy by Allan Ramsay . It was first published in 1725 and dedicated to Susanna Montgomery, Lady Eglinton , to whom Ramsay gifted the original manuscript. The play has some happy descriptive scenes and is a pleasant delineation of rustic manners in the countryside of the Scottish Lowlands in the 18th century. The backdrop is believed to have been inspired by

202-409: A terraformed planet or moon. Unlike most genres of science fiction, pastoral science fiction works downplay the role of futuristic technologies. In the 1950s and 1960s, Clifford Simak wrote stories about rural people who have contact with extraterrestrial beings who hide their alien identity. Pastoral science fiction stories typically show a reverence for the land, its life-giving food harvests,

303-716: A usurer to leave it behind for the country. Later Silver Latin poets who wrote pastoral poetry, modeled principally upon Virgil's Eclogues, include Calpurnius Siculus and Nemesianus and the author(s) of the Einsiedeln Eclogues . Italian poets revived the pastoral from the 14th century onwards, first in Latin (examples include works by Petrarch , Pontano and Mantuan ) then in the Italian vernacular ( Sannazaro , Boiardo ). The fashion for pastoral spread throughout Renaissance Europe. Leading French pastoral poets include Marot ,

404-577: A Festival production at the Signet Library in August 1986. This Scotland -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a poem is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Pastoral The genre is also known as bucolic , from the Greek βουκολικόν , from βουκόλος , meaning a cowherd . Pastoral is a mode of literature in which

505-565: A bucolic collection has appended an epilogue in which he takes leave of the Bucolic Muses. On the other hand, it is clear that both poems were in Virgil's Theocritus, and that they passed the scrutiny of the editor who formed the short collection of Theocritean Bucolics. The mimes are three in number: 2, 14, and 15. In 2 Simaetha, deserted by Delphis, tells the story of her love to the moon; in 14 Aeschines narrates his quarrel with his sweetheart, and

606-668: A feature of grand opera , most particularly in Meyerbeer's operas: often composers would develop a pastoral-themed "oasis", usually in the centre of their work. Notable examples include the shepherd's "alte Weise" from Wagner 's Tristan und Isolde , or the pastoral ballet occupying the middle of Tchaikovsky 's The Queen of Spades . The 20th-century continued to bring new pastoral interpretations, particularly in ballet, such as Ravel's Daphis and Chloe , Nijinsky's use of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , and Stravinsky 's Le sacre du printemps and Les Noces . The Pastorale

707-433: A grammarian, who lived in the time of Sulla and is said to have been the first editor of these poems. He says, "The Muses of country song were once scattered, but now they are all together in one pen, in one flock." The second epigram is anonymous, and runs as follows: "The Chian is another man, but I, Theocritus, who wrote these poems, am one of the great populace of Syracuse, the son of Praxagoras and renowned Philinna; and

808-753: A group of three books of the canonical New Testament : the First Epistle to Timothy (1 Timothy) the Second Epistle to Timothy (2 Timothy), and the Epistle to Titus . They are presented as letters from Paul the Apostle to Timothy and to Titus . They are generally discussed as a group (sometimes with the addition of the Epistle to Philemon ) and are given the title "pastoral" because they are addressed to individuals with pastoral oversight of churches and discuss issues of Christian living, doctrine and leadership . In

909-540: A guise for political discourse, which other forms had previously neglected. The Pastoral, he writes, has a didactic duty to “contain and enforme morall discipline for the amendment of mans behaviour”. Friedrich Schiller linked the Pastoral to childhood and a childlike simplicity. For Schiller, we perceive in nature an “image of our infancy irrevocably past”. Sir William Empson spoke of the ideal of Pastoral as being embedded in varying degrees of ambivalence, and yet, for all

1010-720: A hand in the first Scottish opera , the pastoral The Gentle Shepherd , with libretto by the makar Allan Ramsay . An adaptation of The Gentle Shepherd by Robert Kemp was staged at the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie during the Edinburgh International Festival in August 1949. The play was staged by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama as

1111-464: A highly unrealistic manner. The pastoral life is usually characterized as being closer to the golden age than the rest of human life. The setting is a locus amoenus , or a beautiful place in nature, sometimes connected with images of the Garden of Eden . An example of the use of the genre is the short poem by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson Robene and Makyne which also contains

SECTION 10

#1732852446381

1212-563: A life of melancholy and solitude. Milton's, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629) blends Christian and pastoral imagery. Milton is perhaps best known for his epic Paradise Lost , one of the few Pastoral epics ever written. A notable part of Paradise Lost is book IV where he chronicles Satan's trespass into paradise. Milton's iconic descriptions of the garden are shadowed by the fact that we see it from Satan's perspective and are thus led to commiserate with him. Milton elegantly works through

1313-488: A pastoral view demonstrates how prestigious Penshurst was, to be worthy in the company with gods. "A Country Life", another 17th-century work by Katherine Philips , was also a country house poem. Philips focuses on the joys of the countryside and looks upon the lifestyle that accompanies it as being "the first and happiest life, when man enjoyed himself." She writes about maintaining this lifestyle by living detached from material things, and by not over-concerning herself with

1414-555: A poet of the French court, and Pierre de Ronsard , once called the "prince of poets" in his day. The first pastorals in English were the Eclogues (c. 1515) of Alexander Barclay , which were heavily influenced by Mantuan. A landmark in English pastoral poetry was Spenser ’s The Shepheardes Calender , first published in 1579. Spenser's work consists of twelve eclogues, one for each month of

1515-467: A presentation of Adam and Eve ’s pastorally idyllic, eternally fertile living conditions and focuses upon their stewardship of the garden. He gives much focus to the fruit bearing trees and Adam and Eve's care of them, sculpting an image of pastoral harmony. However, Milton in turn continually comes back to Satan , constructing him as a character the audience can easily identify with and perhaps even like. Milton creates Satan as character meant to destabilize

1616-494: A rural region of Greece , mythological home of the god Pan , which was portrayed as a sort of Eden by the poets. The tasks of their employment with sheep and other rustic chores is held in the fantasy to be almost wholly undemanding and is left in the background, leaving the shepherdesses and their swains in a state of almost perfect leisure . This makes them available for embodying perpetual erotic fantasies. The shepherds spend their time chasing pretty girls – or, at least in

1717-482: A sense of nostalgia for their country way of living. His next argument focuses on the artificiality of poetry, drawing upon fellow theorist, Puttenham. Kermode elaborates on this and says, "the cultivated, in their artificial way, reflect upon and describe, for their own ends, the natural life". Kermode wants us to understand that the recreation or reproduction of the natural is in itself artificial. Kermode elaborates on this in terms of imitation, describing it as "one of

1818-709: A specifically ‘Irish pastoral'". In 2014, The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature had a chapter on the urban pastoral subgenre. Charles Siebert's Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral describes a man who splits his time between a gritty Brooklyn apartment, where the night is filled with the sounds of pigeons, starlings, and youth gangs shouting, and driving to rural Quebec to squat in an abandoned, tumbledown cabin in rural Quebec. Theocritus's Idylls include strophic songs and musical laments, and, as in Homer , his shepherds often play

1919-411: A tool for writers to discuss a controversial topic without repercussions. Raymond Williams argues that the foundation of the pastoral lies in the idea that the city is a highly urban, industrialized center that has removed us from the peaceful life we once had in the countryside. However, he states that this is really a "myth functioning as a memory" that literature has created in its representations of

2020-408: A voyeuristic point of view with his love, and they are not directly interacting with the other true shepherds and nature. Pastoral shepherds and maidens usually have Greek names like Corydon or Philomela, reflecting the origin of the pastoral genre. Pastoral poems are set in beautiful rural landscapes, the literary term for which is "locus amoenus" (Latin for "beautiful place"), such as Arcadia ,

2121-431: Is a form of Italian folk song still played in the regions of Southern Italy where the zampogna continues to thrive. They generally sound like a slowed down version of a tarantella , as they encompass many of the same melodic phrases. The pastorale on the zampogna can be played by a solo zampogna player, or in some regions can be accompanied by the piffero (also commonly called a ciaramella , 'pipita', or bifora ), which

SECTION 20

#1732852446381

2222-733: Is a hungry poet seeking for a patron, while in the other he is well satisfied with the world. Now Hiero first came to the front in 275 when he was made General: Theocritus speaks of his achievements as still to come, and the silence of the poet would show that Hiero's marriage to Phulistis, his victory over the Mamertines at the Longanus and his election as "King", events which are ascribed to 270, had not yet taken place. If so, 17 and 15 can only have been written within 275 and 270. Two of these are certainly by Theocritus, 28 and 29, composed in Aeolic verse and in

2323-561: Is a primitive key-less double reed oboe type instrument. Idealised pastoral landscapes appear in Hellenistic and Roman wall paintings. Interest in the pastoral as a subject for art revived in Renaissance Italy, partly inspired by the descriptions of pictures Jacopo Sannazaro included in his Arcadia . The Pastoral Concert in the Louvre attributed to Giorgione or Titian is perhaps

2424-448: Is advised to go to Egypt and enlist in the army of Ptolemy Philadelphus ; in 15 Gorgo and Praxinoë go to the festival of Adonis . In the best manuscript 2 comes immediately before 14, an arrangement which is obviously right, since it places the three mimes together. The second place in the manuscripts is occupied by Idyll 7, the "Harvest Feast." Chisholm praises the mimes, saying "These three mimes are wonderfully natural and lifelike. There

2525-406: Is assigned to Theocritus by recent editors. The following poems are now generally considered to be spurious: 19. Love stealing Honey . The poem is anonymous in the manuscripts and the conception of Love is not Theocritean. 20. Herdsman , 21. Fishermen , 23. Passionate Lover . These three poems are remarkable for the corrupt state of their text, which makes it likely that they have come from

2626-487: Is evident in the encounter of a shepherd and a goatherd who meet in the pastures in Theocritus ' poem Idylls 1 . Traditionally, pastoral refers to the lives of herdsmen in a romanticized, exaggerated, but representative way. In literature , the adjective 'pastoral' refers to rural subjects and aspects of life in the countryside among shepherds , cowherds and other farm workers that are often romanticized and depicted in

2727-563: Is nothing in ancient literature so vivid and real as the chatter of Gorgo and Praxinoë, and the voces populi in 15". In addition to the Bucolics and Mimes, there are three poems which cannot be brought into any other class: The genuineness of the last was attacked by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff on account of the crudity of the language, which sometimes degenerates into doggerel. However, Chisholm considered it genuine, arguing that Theocritus had intentionally used realistic language for

2828-405: Is of six 'books' only, though Spenser intended to write twelve. He wrote the poem primarily to honor Queen Elizabeth . William Cowper addressed the artificiality of the fast-paced city life in his poems Retirement (1782) and The Winter Nosegay (1782). Pastoral nevertheless survived as a mood rather than a genre, as can be seen from such works as Matthew Arnold 's Thyrsis (1867), a lament on

2929-453: Is often contrasted with the negative aspects of noisy, dirty, fast-paced cities. Some works take a Luddite tone, criticizing mechanization and industrialization and showing the ills of urbanization and over-reliance on advanced technologies. In 1994, British literature professor Terry Gifford proposed the concept of a "post-pastoral" subgenre. By appending the prefix "post-", Gifford does not intend this to refer to “after” but rather to

3030-498: Is some delicate fancy in the description of his poems as Charites , and a passage at the end, where he foretells the joys of peace after the enemy have been driven out of Sicily , has the true bucolic ring. The most that can be said of 22 and 24 is that they are very dramatic. Otherwise they differ little from work done by other poets, such as Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius . From another point of view, however, these two poems 16 and 17 are supremely interesting, since they are

3131-479: Is the Edenic Pastoral, which alludes to the perfect relationship between God, man, and nature in the Garden of Eden . It typically includes biblical symbols and imagery. In 1645 John Milton wrote L'Allegro , which translates as the happy person. It is a celebration of Mirth personified, who is the child of love and revelry. It was originally composed to be a companion poem to, Il Penseroso , which celebrates

The Gentle Shepherd - Misplaced Pages Continue

3232-509: Is the first example of literature that has pastoral sentiments and may have begun the pastoral tradition. Ovid's Metamorphoses is much like the Works and Days with the description of ages (golden, silver, bronze, iron, and human) but with more ages to discuss and less emphasis on the gods and their punishments. In this artificially constructed world, nature acts as the main punisher. Another example of this perfect relationship between man and nature

3333-400: The Aeolic dialect . The first is a very graceful poem presented together with a distaff to Theugenis, wife of Nicias, a doctor of Miletus, on the occasion of a voyage thither undertaken by the poet. The theme of 29 is similar to that of 12. A very corrupt poem, only found in one very late manuscript, was discovered by Ziegler in 1864. As the subject and style very closely resemble that of 29, it

3434-540: The Harvest Feast , is the most important of the bucolic poems. The scene is laid in the isle of Kos . The poet speaks in the first person and is called Simichidas by his friends. Other poets are introduced under feigned names. Ancient critics identified the character Sicelidas of Samos with Asclepiades of Samos , and the character Lycidas, "the goatherd of Cydonia," with the poet Astacides, whom Callimachus calls "the Cretan,

3535-587: The Hebrew word רעה ( roʿeh ), which is used as a noun as in "shepherd", and as a verb as in "to tend a flock." It occurs 173 times in 144 Old Testament verses and relates to the literal feeding of sheep, as in Genesis 29:7. In Jeremiah 23:4, both meanings are used ( ro'im is used for "shepherds" and yir'um for "shall feed them"), "And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith

3636-491: The Penicuik area some eight miles south west of Edinburgh where Ramsay was frequently the guest of his patron Sir John Clerk of Penicuik at Penicuik House . The Italian style of classical music was probably first brought to Scotland by the Italian cellist and composer Lorenzo Bocchi, who travelled to Scotland in the 1720s, introducing the cello to the country and then developing settings for lowland Scots songs. He possibly had

3737-460: The syrinx , or pan flute, which is considered a quintessentially pastoral instrument. Virgil's Eclogues were performed as sung mime in the 1st century, and there is evidence of the pastoral song as a legitimate genre of classical times. The pastoral genre was a significant influence in the development of opera . After settings of pastoral poetry in the pastourelle genre by the troubadours , Italian poets and composers became increasingly drawn to

3838-456: The "post-pastoral" concept, as well as two other variants: "gay pastoral", the seemingly contradictory "urban pastoral" and "radical pastoral". Gifford lists further examples of pastoral variants, which he calls "prefix-pastoral[s]": " postmodern pastoral,...hard pastoral, soft pastoral, Buell’s revolutionary lesbian feminist pastoral, black pastoral, ghetto pastoral, frontier pastoral, militarized pastoral, domestic pastoral and, most recently,

3939-498: The 17th century came the Country house poem . Included in this genre is Emilia Lanier 's The Description of Cooke-ham in 1611, in which a woman is described in terms of her relationship to her estate and how it mourns for her when she leaves it. In 1616, Ben Jonson wrote To Penshurst, a poem in which he addresses the estate owned by the Sidney family and tells of its beauty. The basis of

4040-420: The City . This acknowledgment of Herrick's work is appropriate, as both Williams and Herrick accentuate the importance of labor in the pastoral lifestyle. The pastoral elegy is a subgenre that uses pastoral elements to lament a death or loss. The most famous pastoral elegy in English is John Milton 's " Lycidas " (1637), written on the death of Edward King, a fellow student at Cambridge University. Milton used

4141-676: The Cyclops in the Odyssey , as his "countryman." He also probably lived in Alexandria for a while, where he wrote about everyday life, notably Pharmakeutria . It is also speculated that Theocritus was born in Syracuse , lived on the island of Kos , and lived in Egypt during the time of Ptolemy II . The record of these recensions is preserved by two epigrams, one of which proceeds from Artemidorus of Tarsus ,

The Gentle Shepherd - Misplaced Pages Continue

4242-524: The Greek and Roman versions, pretty boys as well. The eroticism of Virgil 's second eclogue , Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin ("The shepherd Corydon burned with passion for pretty Alexis"), is entirely homosexual . Pastoral literature continued after Hesiod with the poetry of the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus , several of whose Idylls are set in the countryside (probably reflecting

4343-556: The Jewish world at the time of the origins of Christianity in the first century CE. A pastoral letter , often called simply a pastoral, is an open letter addressed by a bishop to the clergy or laity of a diocese or to both, containing general admonition, instruction or consolation, or directions for behavior in particular circumstances. In most episcopal church bodies, clerics are often required to read out pastoral letters of superior bishops to their congregations. The pastoral epistles are

4444-583: The LORD." ( KJV ). A pastoral economic system had great cultural significance for the Jewish people from earliest recorded times: Abraham herded flocks. Throughout the biblical accounts of the Children of Israel , a pastoral lifestyle in the harsh hinterland of the Levant related to the ideal of a society obedient to Yahweh , in contrast to the corruption and idolatry encountered in the "fleshpots of Egypt" (Exodus 16:3), in

4545-558: The Muse I have adopted is no alien." The last line may mean that he wrote nothing but bucolic poems, or that he only wrote in Doric . The assertion that he was from Syracuse appears to be upheld by allusions in the Idylls (7.7, 28.16–18). The information concerning his parentage bears the stamp of authenticity, and disposes of a rival theory based upon a misinterpretation of Idyll 7—which made him

4646-610: The Proetides at Eclogue 6.48. The spurious poem 21 may have been one of the Hopes , and poem 26 may have been one of the Heroines ; elegiacs are found in 8.33—60, and the spurious epitaph on Bion may have been one of the Dirges . The other classes are all represented in the larger collection which has come down to us. The distinction between these is that the scenes of the former are laid in

4747-405: The apparent dichotomies, and contradicting elements found within it, he felt there was a unified harmony within it. He refers to the pastoral process as 'putting the complex into the simple.' Empson argues that "... good proletarian art is usually Covert Pastoral", and uses Soviet Russia's propaganda about the working class as evidence. Empson also emphasizes the importance of the double plot as

4848-451: The audience’s understanding of themselves and the world around them. Through this mode, Milton is able to create a working dialogue between the text and his audience about the ‘truths’ they hold for themselves. Italian writers invented a new genre, the pastoral romance, which mixed pastoral poems with a fictional narrative in prose. Although there was no classical precedent for the form, it drew some inspiration from ancient Greek novels set in

4949-412: The author employs various techniques to place the complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature. Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature (poetry, drama, etc.) as well as genres (most notably

5050-412: The concept of Gifford's second definition of 'pastoral'. The speaker of the poem, who is the titled shepherd, draws on the idealization of urban material pleasures to win over his love rather than resorting to the simplified pleasures of pastoral ideology. This can be seen in the listed items: "lined slippers", "purest gold", "silver dishes", and "ivory table" (lines 13, 15, 16, 21, 23). The speaker takes on

5151-531: The conflicted emotions often present in the genre. A more tranquil mood is set by Christopher Marlowe 's well known lines from his 1588 The Passionate Shepherd to His Love : Come live with me and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield. There will we sit upon the rocks And see the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" exhibits

SECTION 50

#1732852446381

5252-437: The country and those of the latter in a town. The most famous of the Bucolics are 1 , 6 , 7 and 11 . In "Idyll 1" Thyrsis sings to a goatherd about how Daphnis , the mythical herdsman, having defied the power of Aphrodite , dies rather than yielding to a passion the goddess has inflicted on him. In the poem, a series of divine figures from classical mythology, including Hermes , Priapus , and Aphrodite herself, interrogate

5353-736: The countryside, such as Daphnis and Chloe . The most influential Italian example of the form was Sannazzaro 's Arcadia (1504). The vogue for the pastoral romance spread throughout Europe producing such notable works as Bernardim Ribeiro "Menina e Moça" (1554) in Portuguese, Montemayor 's Diana (1559) in Spain, Sir Philip Sidney 's Arcadia (1590) in England, and Honoré d'Urfé 's Astrée (1607–27) in France. Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age Pastoral drama also emerged in Renaissance Italy. Again, there

5454-419: The cycle of the seasons, and the role of the community. While fertile agrarian environments on Earth or Earth-like planets are common settings, some works may be set in ocean or desert planets or habitable moons. The rural dwellers, such as farmers and small-townspeople, are depicted sympathetically, albeit with the tendency to portray them as conservative and suspicious of change. The simple, peaceful rural life

5555-457: The death of his fellow poet Arthur Hugh Clough . Robert Burns can be read as a Pastoral poet for his nostalgic portrayals of rural Scotland and simple farm life in To A Mouse and The Cotter's Saturday Night . Burns explicitly addresses the Pastoral form in his Poem on Pastoral Poetry . In this he champions his fellow Scot Allan Ramsey as the best Pastoral poet since Theocritus . Another subgenre

5656-409: The famous pastoral epic The Faerie Queene , in which he employs the pastoral mode to accentuate the charm, lushness, and splendor of the poem's (super)natural world. Spenser alludes to the pastoral continuously throughout the work and also uses it to create allegory in his poem, with the characters as well as with the environment, both of which are meant to have symbolic meaning in the real world. It

5757-470: The folly of mortals who challenge the gods. In "Idyll 11" Polyphemus is depicted as in love with the sea-nymph Galatea and finding solace in song. In "Idyll 6," he is cured of his passion and naively relates how he repulses the overtures now made to him by Galatea. The monster of Homer's Odyssey has been "written up to date" after the Alexandrian manner and has become a gentle simpleton. "Idyll 7,"

5858-566: The form both to explore his vocation as a writer and to attack what he saw as the abuses of the Church. Also included is Thomas Gray 's, "Elegy In a Country Churchyard" (1750). The formal English pastoral continued to flourish during the 18th century, eventually dying out at the end. One notable example of an 18th-century work is Alexander Pope 's Pastorals (1709). In this work Pope imitates Edmund Spenser 's Shepheardes Calendar , while utilizing classical names and allusions aligning him with Virgil . In 1717, Pope's Discourse on Pastoral Poetry

5959-510: The form of Pastourelle. This is the first time that the pastoral really deals with the subject of love. Theocritus Theocritus ( / θ iː ˈ ɒ k r ɪ t ə s / ; Ancient Greek : Θεόκριτος , Theokritos ; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily , Magna Graecia , and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry . Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of

6060-426: The fundamental laws of literary history" because it "gives literary history a meaning in terms of itself, and provides the channels of literary tradition". Kermode goes on to explain about the works of Virgil and Theocritus as progenitors of the pastoral. Later poets would draw on these earlier forms of pastoral, elaborating on them to fit their own social context. As the pastoral was becoming more modern, it shifted into

6161-524: The goatherd." Theocritus speaks of himself as having already gained fame, and says that his songs have been brought by report even unto the throne of Zeus . He praises Philitas , the veteran poet of Kos, and criticizes "the fledgelings of the Muse , who cackle against the Chian bard and find their labour lost." Other persons mentioned are Nicias, a physician of Miletus, whose name occurs in other poems, and Aratus , whom

SECTION 60

#1732852446381

6262-432: The landscape of the island of Cos where the poet lived) and involve dialogues between herdsmen. Theocritus may have drawn on authentic folk traditions of Sicilian shepherds. He wrote in the Doric dialect but the metre he chose was the dactylic hexameter associated with the most prestigious form of Greek poetry, epic . This blend of simplicity and sophistication would play a major part in later pastoral verse. Theocritus

6363-479: The lush Canaanite lowlands "flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:8), or in Babylon , the "great city" of Israelite exile. David , a righteous shepherd-boy associated with the arid hill-country, contrasts with Goliath and Saul , representatives of luxurious urban élites. Thus New Testament imagery of shepherds and their sheep builds on established cultural and economic distinctions familiar, directly or indirectly, to

6464-516: The most famous painting in this style. Later, French artists were also attracted to the pastoral, notably Claude , Poussin (e.g., Et in Arcadia ego ) and Watteau (in his Fêtes galantes ). The Fête champêtre , with scenes of country people dancing was a popular subject in Flemish painting. Thomas Cole has a series of paintings titled The Course of Empire , and the second of these paintings (shown on

6565-466: The most important tropes of which he cites as religion (embodied by Pan); friendship; allegory;and poetic and musical calling. He concedes though that such a categorization is open to much misinterpretation. As well, Poggioli focused on the idea that Pastoral was a nostalgic and childish way of seeing the world. In The Oaten Flue , he claims that the shepherd was looked up to was because they were “an ideal kind of leisure class." Frank Kermode discusses

6666-421: The neighborhood of Croton, and we may infer that Theocritus was personally acquainted with Magna Graecia . Suspicion has been cast upon idylls 8 and 9 on various grounds. An extreme view holds that within "Idyll 9" there exist two genuine Theocritean fragments, ll.7-13 and 15–20, describing the joys of summer and winter respectively, which have been provided with a clumsy preface, ll.1-6, while an early editor of

6767-710: The nymph responds realistically to the idealizing shepherd of The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by embracing and explaining the true course of nature and its incompatibility with the love that the Shepherd yearns for with the nymph. Terry Gifford defined the anti-pastoral in his 2012 essay "Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral and Post-Pastoral as Reading Strategies" as an often explicit correction of pastoral, emphasizing "realism" over romance, highlighting problematic elements (showing tensions, disorder and inequalities), challenging literary constructs as false distortions and demythologizing mythical locations such as Arcadia and Shangri-La . In

6868-507: The only ones which can be dated. In 17 Theocritus celebrates the incestuous marriage of Ptolemy Philadelphus with his sister Arsinoë . This marriage is held to have taken place in 277 BC, and a recently discovered inscription shows that Arsinoë died in 270, in the fifteenth year of her brother's reign. This poem, therefore, together with xv, which Theocritus wrote to please Arsinoë must fall within this period. The encomium upon Hiero II would seem prior to that upon Ptolemy, since in it Theocritus

6969-427: The past four hundred years, a range of writers have worked on theorizing the nature of pastoral. These include Friedrich Schiller , George Puttenham , William Empson , Frank Kermode , Raymond Williams , Renato Poggioli , Annabel Patterson, Paul Alpers, and Ken Hiltner. George Puttenham was one of the first Pastoral theorists. He did not see the form as merely a recording of a prior rustic way of life but

7070-417: The past. As a result, when society evolves and looks back to these representations, it considers its own present as the decline of the simple life of the past. He then discusses how the city's relationship with the country affected the economic and social aspects of the countryside. As the economy became a bigger part of society, many country newcomers quickly realized the potential and monetary value that lay in

7171-408: The pastoral elegy). Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, defines pastoral in three ways in his critical book Pastoral . The first way emphasizes the historical literary perspective of the pastoral in which authors recognize and discuss life in the country and in particular the life of a shepherd. This is summed up by Leo Marx with the phrase "No shepherd, no pastoral." The second type of

7272-506: The pastoral is literature that "describes the country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban". The third type of pastoral depicts the country life with derogative classifications. Hesiod 's Works and Days presents a 'golden age' when people lived together in harmony with nature. This Golden Age shows that even before the Alexandrian age , ancient Greeks had sentiments of an ideal pastoral life that they had already lost. This

7373-471: The pastoral within the historical context of the English Renaissance. His first condition of pastoral poetry is that it is an urban product. Kermode establishes that the pastoral is derived as an opposition between two modes of living, in the country and in the city. London was becoming a modern metropolis before the eyes of its citizens. The result of this large-scale urban sprawl left the people with

7474-539: The pastoral". He gives examples of post-pastoral works, including Cormac McCarthy ’s The Road (2006), Margaret Atwood ’s The Year of the Flood (2009) and Maggie Gee ’s The Ice People (1999), and he points out that these works "raise questions of ethics, sustenance and sustainability that might exemplify [Leo] Marx’s vision of the pastoral needing to find new forms in the face of new conditions". Gifford states that British eco-critics such as Greg Garrard have used

7575-421: The pastoral. Musical settings of pastoral poetry became increasingly common in first polyphonic and then monodic madrigals : these later led to the cantata and the serenata , in which pastoral themes remained on a consistent basis. Partial musical settings of Giovanni Battista Guarini 's Il pastor fido were highly popular: the texts of over 500 madrigals were taken from this one play alone. Tasso 's Aminta

7676-512: The play who embraces and appreciates both the real and idealized life and manages to make the two ideas coexist. Therefore, Shakespeare explores city and country life as being appreciated through the coexistence of the two. Pastoral science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction which uses bucolic, rural settings, like other forms of pastoral literature. Since it is a subgenre of science fiction, authors may set stories either on Earth or another habitable planet or moon, sometimes including

7777-418: The play, Shakespeare employs various characters to illustrate pastoralism . His protagonists Rosalind and Orlando metaphorically depict the importance of the coexistence of realism and idealism, or urban and rural life. While Orlando is absorbed in the ideal, Rosalind serves as a mediator, bringing Orlando back down to reality and embracing the simplicity of pastoral love. She is the only character throughout

7878-486: The poem is a harmonious and joyous elation of the memories that Jonson had at the manor. It is beautifully written with iambic pentameter, a style that Jonson eloquently uses to describe the culture of Penshurst. It includes Pan and Bacchus as notable company of the manor. Pan, Greek god of the Pastoral world, half man and half goat, was connected with both hunting and shepherds; Bacchus was the god of wine, intoxication and ritual madness. This reference to Pan and Bacchus in

7979-419: The poems ( Idylls ; Εἰδύλλια ) commonly attributed to him have little claim to authenticity. It is clear that at a very early date two collections were made: one consisting of poems whose authorship was doubtful yet formed a corpus of bucolic poetry, the other a strict collection of those works considered to have been composed by Theocritus himself. Theocritus was from Sicily , as he refers to Polyphemus ,

8080-673: The right) depicts the perfect pastoral setting. Pastoral imagery and symbolism feature heavily in Christianity and the Bible. Jesus calls himself the "Good Shepherd" in John 10:11 , contrasting his role as the Lamb of God . Many Christian denominations use the title " Pastor ", a word rooted in the Biblical metaphor of shepherding. ( Pastor in Latin means "shepherd"). The Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) uses

8181-532: The sake of dramatic effect and that the manuscript evidence supported its genuineness. Eustathius quotes from it as the work of Theocritus. Three of these are Hymns: 16, 17, and 22. In 16, the poet praises Hiero II of Syracuse , in 17 Ptolemy Philadelphus , and in 22 the Dioscuri . The other poems are 13, the story of Hylas and the Nymphs , and 24 the youthful Heracles . In 13 he makes use of word-painting; in 16 there

8282-435: The same source and possibly are by the same author. The Fishermen has been much admired. It is addressed to Diophantus and conveys a moral, that one should work and not dream, illustrated by the story of an old fisherman who dreams that he has caught a fish of gold and narrates his vision to his mate. As Leonidas of Tarentum wrote epigrams on fishermen, and one of them is a dedication of his tackle to Poseidon by Diophantus,

8383-624: The same time, Italian and German composers developed a genre of vocal and instrumental pastorals, distinguished by certain stylistic features, associated with Christmas Eve. The pastoral, and parodies of the pastoral, continued to play an important role in musical history throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. John Gay may have satirized the pastoral in The Beggar's Opera , but also wrote an entirely sincere libretto for Handel 's Acis and Galatea . Rousseau 's Le Devin du village draws on pastoral roots, and Metastasio 's libretto Il re pastore

8484-516: The scholiasts identify with the author of the Phenomena . Several of the other bucolic poems consist of singing-matches, conducted according to the rules of amoebaean poetry , in which the second singer takes the subject chosen by the first and contributes a variation on the same theme. It may be noted that Theocritus' rustic characters differ greatly in refinement. Those in "Idyll 5" are low fellows who indulge in coarse abuse. Idylls 4 and 5 are laid in

8585-422: The sense of “reaching beyond” the contraints of the pastoral genre, but while continuing the core conceptual elements that have defined the pastoral tradition. Gifford states that the post-pastoral is "best used to describe works that successfully suggest a collapse of the human/nature divide whilst being aware of the problematics involved", noting that it is "more about connection than the disconnections essential to

8686-599: The shepherd about his lovesickness. As Daphnis lies dying, Priapus asks: "Wretched Daphnis, why pinest thou?"; Hermes inquires: "Daphnis, who wastes thee away?" Alongside these mythological figures appear shepherds and goatherds, who likewise wonder "what harm had befallen" Daphnis. Finally, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, appears to taunt Daphnis for his hubris: "Thou indeed, Daphnis, didst boast that thou wouldst bend Love! Hast not thou, in thine own person, been bent by grievous love?" The failure of these figures to comfort Daphnis in his dying moments thematizes classical beliefs about

8787-563: The son of one Simichus. A larger collection, possibly more extensive than that of Artemidorus, and including poems of doubtful authenticity, was known to the author of the Suda , who says: "Theocritus wrote the so-called bucolic poems in the Doric dialect. Some persons also attribute to him the following: Daughters of Proetus, Hopes, Hymns, Heroines, Dirges, Lyrics, Elegies, Iambics, Epigrams." The first of these may have been known to Virgil , who refers to

8888-419: The traditional pastoral conventions of Theocritus. He was the first to set his poems in Arcadia, an idealized location to which much later pastoral literature will refer. Horace 's Epodes , ii Country Joys has "the dreaming man" Alfius, who dreams of escaping his busy urban life for the peaceful country. But as "the dreaming man" indicates, this is just a dream for Alfius. He is too consumed in his career as

8989-419: The untouched land. Furthermore, this new system encouraged a social stratification in the countryside. With the implementation of paper money came a hierarchy in the working system, as well as the "inheritance of titles and making of family names". Poggioli was concerned with how death reconciled itself with the pastoral, and thus came up with a loose categorization of death in the pastoral as 'funeral elegy',

9090-405: The woods, the river, his Pupil Mary, and the future. Marvell used nature as a thread to weave together a poem centered around man. We once again see nature fully providing for man. Marvell also continuously compares nature to art and seems to point out that art can never accomplish on purpose what nature can achieve accidentally or spontaneously. Robert Herrick 's The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home

9191-418: The world around her. Andrew Marvell 's " Upon Appleton House " was written when Marvell was working as a tutor for Lord Fairfax's daughter Mary, in 1651. The poem is very rich with metaphors that relate to religion, politics and history. Similar to Jonson's "To Penshurst", Marvell's poem is describing a pastoral estate. It moves through the house itself, its history, the gardens, the meadows and other grounds,

9292-418: The world in a very anti-pastoral view. In “The Twenty-Third Psalm,” Nature is portrayed as something we need to be protected from, and in “The Nightingale,” the woe of Philomela is compared to the speaker's own pain. Sidney also wrote Arcadia , which is filled with pastoral descriptions of the landscape. " The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd " (1600) by Sir Walter Raleigh also comments on the anti-pastoral as

9393-608: The year, and is written in dialect. It contains elegies , fables and a discussion of the role of poetry in contemporary England. Spenser and his friends appear under various pseudonyms (Spenser himself is "Colin Clout"). Spenser's example was imitated by such poets as Michael Drayton ( Idea, The Shepherd's Garland ) and William Browne ( Britannia's Pastorals ). During this period of England's history, many authors explored "anti-pastoral" themes. Two examples of this, Sir Philip Sidney 's "The Twenty-Third Psalm" and "The Nightingale", focus on

9494-503: Was also a favourite. As opera developed, the dramatic pastoral came to the fore with such works as Jacopo Peri 's Dafne and, most notably, Monteverdi 's L'Orfeo . Pastoral opera remained popular throughout the 17th-century, and not just in Italy, as is shown by the French genre of pastorale héroïque , Englishman Henry Lawes 's music for Milton's Comus (not to mention John Blow 's Venus and Adonis ), and Spanish zarzuela . At

9595-465: Was also written in the 17th century. In this pastoral work, he paints the reader a colorful picture of the benefits reaped from hard work. This is an atypical interpretation of the pastoral, given that there is a celebration of labor involved as opposed to central figures living in leisure and nature just taking its course independently. This poem was mentioned in Raymond Williams ', The Country and

9696-497: Was derived from Thomas Lodge 's pastoral romance Rosalynde ) and The Winter's Tale , of which Act 4 Scene 4 is a lengthy pastoral digression. The forest in As You Like It can be seen as a place of pastoral idealization, where life is simpler and purer, and its inhabitants live more closely to each other, nature and God than their urban counterparts. However, Shakespeare plays with the bounds of pastoral idealization. Throughout

9797-480: Was imitated by the Greek poets Bion and Moschus . The Roman poet Virgil adapted pastoral into Latin with his highly influential Eclogues . Virgil introduces two very important uses of pastoral, the contrast between urban and rural lifestyles and political allegory most notably in Eclogues 1 and 4 respectively. In doing so, Virgil presents a more idealized portrayal of the lives of shepherds while still employing

9898-692: Was little Classical precedent, with the possible exception of Greek satyr plays . Poliziano 's Orfeo (1480) shows the beginnings of the new form, but it reached its zenith in the late 16th century with Tasso 's Aminta (1573), Isabella Andreini 's Mirtilla (1588), and Guarini 's Il pastor fido (1590). John Lyly 's Endimion (1579) brought the Italian-style pastoral play to England. John Fletcher 's The Faithful Shepherdess , Ben Jonson 's The Sad Shepherd and Sidney's The Lady of May are later examples. Some of Shakespeare 's plays contain pastoral elements, most notably As You Like It (whose plot

9999-496: Was published as a preface to Pastorals. In this work Pope sets standards for pastoral literature and critiques many popular poets, one of whom is Spenser, along with his contemporary opponent Ambrose Philips . During this time period Ambrose Philips, who is often overlooked because of Pope, modeled his poetry after the native English form of Pastoral, employing it as a medium to express the true nature and longing of Man. He strove to write in this fashion to conform to what he thought

10100-402: Was set over 30 times, most famously by Mozart . Rameau was an outstanding exponent of French pastoral opera. Beethoven also wrote his famous Pastoral Symphony , avoiding his usual musical dynamism in favour of relatively slow rhythms. More concerned with psychology than description, he labelled the work "more the expression of feeling than [realistic] painting". The pastoral also appeared as

10201-469: Was the original intent of Pastoral literature. As such, he centered his themes around the simplistic life of the Shepherd, and, personified the relationship that humans once had with nature. John Gay , who came a little later was criticized for his poem's artificiality by Doctor Johnson and attacked for their lack of realism by George Crabbe , who attempted to give a true picture of rural life in his poem The Village. In 1590, Edmund Spenser also composed

#380619