Introduction to the Pastoral in English poetry

1. POETIC FORMS & GENRES THE PASTORAL Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

3. OED 'Pastoral': 'A poem, play, or the like, in which the life of shepherds is portrayed, often in an artificial and conventional manner; also extended to works dealing with simple rural and open-air life.' Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

5. Greek names e.g. Lycidas, Damon, Philomena, Chlorinda often continued to appear in pastoral poetry

6. 1st Century AD Roman poet Virgil adapted the genre with his Eclogues: a more idealized vision of rural life. Set his poems in 'Arcadia'

7. 14th Century Italian poets revived the genre which spread throughout EuropeSarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

9. The poem introduces 'Colin Clout' and depicts his life as a shepherd through the twelve months of the year. Deliberately archaic language.

10. Pastoral Life is not presented realistically in any of these worksCharacters are interested in the pursuit of romance, an idyllic rural landscape and a life of leisure Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

11. From 'The Passionate Shepherd to his Love' (Christopher Marlowe, 1599) Come live with me and by 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. Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

14. The pastoral landscape is a view of the countryside from the urban perspective of the town or court.

15. Pastoral is often a nostalgic form, produced by those conscious of having lost something: it looks backwards in time

16. Simplicity is located in the country, complexity is located in a sophisticated and decadent city.Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

17. Pastoral Comedy 'As You Like It' (Shakespeare, 1600) Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venemous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. (II, i, 1-17) Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

19. In this golden age at the beginning of human history, life was simple and happy

20. This gave way to the silver age, then the bronze age, then the present day age of iron.

21. Described by Roman poet Ovid (1st Century AD)Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

22. From Ovid's Metamorphosestranslated by Arthur Golding 1567 Then sprang up first the golden age, which of itself maintained The truth and right of everything unforced and unconstrained There was no fear of punishment; there was no threatening law In brazen tables nailed up to keep the folk in awe There was no man would crouch or creep to judge with cap in hand They lived safe without a judge in every realm and land. Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

23. The springtime lasted all the year, and Zephyr with his mild And gentle blast did cherish things that grew of own accord. No muck nor tillage was bestowed on lean and barren land To make the corn of better head and ranker for to stand. Then streams ran milk, then streams ran wine; and yellow honey flowed From each green tree wheron the rays of fiery Phoebus glowed... Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

24. The Garden of Eden, a Christian version of the golden age and Arcadia? .....This was the place, A happy rural seat of various view; Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms and Balme, Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde Hung amiable, Hesperian Fables true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste: Betwixt them Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks Grassing the tender herb, were interpos'd Or palmiehilloc, or the flourie lap Of some irriguous Valley spred her store, Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose...(Milton: Paradise Lost, Bk IV) Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

26. e.g. Milton, Lycidas (1637); Shelley, Adonais (1821); Arnold, Thyrsis (1865).

27. See handout for extracts from LycidasSarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

29. The poet and the dead person are depicted as shepherds tending their flock

30. All nature joins in mourning the shepherd's death

31. The mourner accuses the dead shepherd's guardians (often nymphs) of negligence

32. The poet questions fate for allowing the death

33. Flowers are brought to decorate the hearse

34. Some kind of consolation at the end.Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

36. Modern example: Louis MacNeice ‘Eclogue for Christmas’ (1930)Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

37. from Eclogue for Christmas A. I meet you in an evil time. B. The evil bells Put out of our heads, I think, the thought of everything else. A. The jaded calendar revolves Its nuts need oil, carbon chokes the valves, The excess sugar of a diabetic culture Rotting the nerve of life and literature... Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

39. In more recent usage 'pastoral' has come to be employed in an extended sense.

40. Poet and critic William Empson, in Some Versions of Pastoral (1935) defined it as the 'process of putting the complex into the simple'

41. 'In pastoral you take a limited life and pretend it is the full and normal one' (i.e. an element of pretense)Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

44. Samuel Johnson on Milton's Lycidas:'We know that they never drove a field, and that they had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote that it is never sought because it cannot be known when it is found' Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

46. In reaction to this there developed a kind of poetry called the anti-pastoral, which challenged the conventions of pastoralSarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

47. From Stephen Duck's The Thresher's Labour (1736) Think what a painful life we daily lead; Each morning early rise, go late to bed: Nor, when asleep, are we secure from Pain We then perform our labours o'er again: Our mimic fancy ever restless seems And what we act awake, she acts in dreams. Hard Fate! Our labours ev'n in sleep don't cease; Scarce Hercules e'er felt such Toils as these! Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

49. But, as the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics comments, 'there must be some unique value in a genre that lasted 2,000 years'.

50. The non-classical idea of pastoral still appears in different forms which identify the simple and natural on one side and the cultivated and complex on the other.Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres