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"Pastoral" (from pastor, Latin for "shepherd") refers to a literary work dealing with shepherds and rustic life. Pastoral poetry is highly conventionalized; it presents an idealized rather than realistic view of rustic life. Pastoral poems range from love lyrics to lengthy dramatic works and elaborate elegies. Classical pastoral poetry stemmed from the folk songs and ceremonies that honored the pastoral gods. The earliest extant pastoral poetry, the Idylls, was written by the Alexandrine Theocritus in the 3rd century BC; he was followed by the Greek poets Bion and Moschus in the 2nd century BC. Virgil Latinized the mode in his Bucolics (37 BC).
The pastoral eclogue, a dialogue or conversation, often was the means by which, in contrasting simple shepherds in rustic surroundings with the urbane society of a corrupt court or city, the author expressed a moral or philosophical viewpoint. The form was popular with such Italian Renaissance humanists as Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio. One of the earliest dramatic pastorals is Orfeo, by Politian, performed at the court of Mantua (Mantova) about AD1471. Others include Aminta (1573) by Torquato Tasso and Il pastor fido (1590) by Giovanni Guarini. Nondramatic pastorals of 16th-century Italy include the romance Arcadia (1504) by Jacopo Sannazzaro. The pastoral also flourished at this time in the poems of the Portuguese writer Gil Vicente and the Spanish writers Juan del Encina, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and others. The Spanish poet and novelist Jorge de Montemayor influenced later poets with his pastoral novel The Seven Books of Diana (1559).
In England The Shepheardes Calendar in 12 pastoral eclogues (1579) by Edmund Spenser formed a model for posterity. The pastoral spirit overflowed into other forms of English literature: into drama with The Arraignment of Paris (1581?) by George Peele and with Sad Shepherd (1641) by Ben Jonson; and into romance with Arcadia (1590) by Sir Philip Sidney and with many of the pamphlet stories by Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene. It influenced the sonnet with Lodge's cycle Phillis (1593) and, above all, the lyric with innumerable songs and madrigals by Lodge, Greene, Thomas Campion, Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, and others. Several of these are to be found in England's Helicon (1600) and in other anthologies of the day. Even the English playwright William Shakespeare used the pastoral conventions—for example, in the comedy As You Like It (1600). The Shepherd's Week (1714) by John Gay was brightened by glimpses of genuine country life. The Scottish poet Allan Ramsay wrote the successful pastoral comedy The Gentle Shepherd (1725). From the days of Moschus's Lament for Bion the pastoral had been held as an appropriate setting for the funeral elegy. This particular use influenced later British poets, as evidenced in the 17th-century pastoral elegy “Lycidas” by John Milton, in Adonais (1821) by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and in Thyrsis (1866) by Matthew Arnold.
Here is an example of pastoral poetry:
Robert Burns (1759–1796). Poems and Songs.The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Poem on Pastoral Poetry
HAIL, Poesie! thou Nymph reserv’d!
In chase o’ thee, what crowds hae swerv’d
Frae common sense, or sunk enerv’d
’Mang heaps o’ clavers:
And och! o’er aft thy joes hae starv’d,
’Mid a’ thy favours!
Say, Lassie, why, thy train amang,
While loud the trump’s heroic clang,
And sock or buskin skelp alang
To death or marriage;
Scarce ane has tried the shepherd-sang
But wi’ miscarriage?
In Homer’s craft Jock Milton thrives;
Eschylus’ pen Will Shakespeare drives;
Wee Pope, the knurlin’, till him rives
Horatian fame;
In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives
Even Sappho’s flame.
But thee, Theocritus, wha matches?
They’re no herd’s ballats, Maro’s catches;
Squire Pope but busks his skinklin’ patches
O’ heathen tatters:
I pass by hunders, nameless wretches,
That ape their betters.
In this braw age o’ wit and lear,
Will nane the Shepherd’s whistle mair
Blaw sweetly in its native air,
And rural grace;
And, wi’ the far-fam’d Grecian, share
A rival place?
Yes! there is ane; a Scottish callan!
There’s ane; come forrit, honest Allan!
Thou need na jouk behint the hallan,
A chiel sae clever;
The teeth o’ time may gnaw Tantallan,
But thou’s for ever.
Thou paints auld Nature to the nines,
In thy sweet Caledonian lines;
Nae gowden stream thro’ myrtle twines,
Where Philomel,
While nightly breezes sweep the vines,
Her griefs will tell!
In gowany glens thy burnie strays,
Where bonie lasses bleach their claes,
Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,
Wi’ hawthorns gray,
Where blackbirds join the shepherd’s lays,
At close o’ day.
Thy rural loves are Nature’s sel’;
Nae bombast spates o’ nonsense swell;
Nae snap conceits, but that sweet spell
O’ witchin love,
That charm that can the strongest quell,
The sternest move.
Ready to write a pastoral? Here are a few tips:
Pastoral Poetry is a literary work dealing with the lives of shepherds or rural life in general and typically drawing a contrast between the innocence and serenity of a simple life and the misery and corruption of city and especially court life.
The characters in pastoral poetry are often used as vehicles for the expression of the author's moral, social, or literary views.
Sometimes uses the device of "singing matches" between two or more shepherds.
Themes often include love and death.
Give it a try!
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