The Idylls of the classical Greek poet Theocritus and the Eclogues of Virgil were the chief models for Renaissance pastoral poetry. Written from a courtly point of view, the pastoral form treated the life of shepherds in an appropriate rural setting. By extension, pastoral sometimes included other rural subjects, such as fishermen, or characters such as a knight who might accidentally enter the pastoral realm. Because Aristotle had not presented pastoral as one of his canonical genres, Renaissance literary theorists debated the validity of writing pastoral as a serious creative pursuit. One of the criticisms of pastoral poetry, and indeed of the pastoral in general, was its artificiality. Theocritus had been raised in the countryside of Sicily and could genuinely long for the simplicity of that life, or appear to be longing for it, while writing his Idylls at the court in Alexandria. Virgil’s Eclogues refined the sentiments of Theocritus from the viewpoint of an urbane Roman, and most Renaissance poets acquired their knowledge of Theocritus through a polished Virgilian lens. Pastoral poetry was spawned by Renaissance humanists who translated Theocritus into Latin and wrote their own versions of eclogues. Dante, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75) all wrote eclogues and sometimes added elegiac laments to their verse. The best-known and most influential eclogue of Renaissance England was Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender of 1579. He enhanced the realism of his characters by having them speak in simple, rustic language. Eclogues were easily parodied, and court figures were ridiculed in thinly veiled satire posing as pastoral poetry—even more so in pastoral drama (see later discussion).
World History
