| Pastoral | 16th century 17th cetury 18th century |
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Related terms: eclogue georgic idyl bucolic pastourelle pastoral elegy pastoral romance pastoral drama dialogue |
| A short lyric or dialogue in which the speaker or speakers are shepherds. |
| Pastoral apears as both a genre and a mode. In the former sense it refers to rural poems founded on the example of the Idyls of Theocritus and the Eclogues of Virgil in which short passages of description introduce dramatic utterances in which shepherds speak of love, death, and the pains or pleasures of country life in a manner characterized by artless simplicity (or transparent guile). As a mode, elements of pastoral enters into many other literary kinds: allegory (often on theological or political subjects), erotic songs and lyrics, arcadian romance and drama, and in eighteenth and nineteenth-century fictions with rural settings and rustic characters. |
Definitions and illustrations: William Webbe, in A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586). George Puttenham, in Arte of English Poesie (1589). Joshua Poole, in The English Parnassus, or, a Helpe to English Poesie (1657). Edward Bysshe, in Art of English Poetry (1702). Charles Gildon, in The Complete Art of Poetry (1718). Samuel Johnson, in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Anonymous, in The Art of Poetry on a new Plan (1762). Hugh Blair, in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783). Noah Webster, in American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). W. Davenport Adams, in Dictionary of English Literature (1878). Edmund Gosse, in Encyclopedia Britannica (1910-11).
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