History

Elizabethan Pastoral

Characteristics. Pastorelle as sung by French troubadours: the conflict between the rustic world at the court as illustrated by a knight who attempts to seduce a peasant girl. Bibles becomes available in the vernacular: links between the Pastoral and Christ the Shepherd King: emphasis on the pastoral theme of regeneration (annunciation to the shepherds!), coming of the Golden Age. Influence from Italy: Petrarch, Mantuan. First attempt to write an English Pastoral: Spenser and his circle: The Shephearde`s Calendar (1579).

Authors and Works. Barnabe Googe: Egloga Tertia. – Edmund Spenser: The Shepheardes Calendar. – Sir Philip Sidney: Arcadia, Astrophil and Stella, Disprayse of a Courtly life. – Nicolas Breton: A sweete Pastorall, A Sheepheards dreame. – Shepherd Tonie: The Wood-mans walke. – Thomas Lodge: Olde Damons Pastorall. – Robert Greene: Menaphon. – Christopher Marlowe: The passionate Sheepheard to his love. – Sir Walter Raleigh: The Nimphs reply to the Sheepheard, The Ocean to Scinthia. – Richard Barnfield: The Shepheards Content. – Michael Drayton: Idea, The Shepheardes Garland, Pastoralls. – Anonymus: Sir Clyomon and Clamydes. – William Shakespeare: As You Like It, The Winter`s Tale, The Tempest. – Samuel Daniel: The Queenes Arcadia. – John Fletcher: The Faithful Shepherdess. – Ben Jonson: The Sad Shepherd, To Penshurst, To Sir Robert Wroth. – Joseph Rutter: The Shepheard`s Holy-Day

17th century Pastoral

Characteristics. Often retrospective: the paradise, symbolized by a deserted garden, is lost. Civil strife and the growth of a new land-owning class give halt to the pastoral idyll. Pastoral appears to be a mythical account of a rural organization of society. Milton`s Lycidas as an elegy for the Pastoral. Wilderness as place of repose and, simultaneously, a threat to the essential harmony of the natural order.

Authors and Works. The Baite, Ecclogue. – Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke: Caelica. – Phineas Fletcher: The Purple Island. – William Drummond: Deare Wood, and you sweet solitarie Place, Thrise happie hee, who by some shadie Grove. – William Browne: Britannia`s Pastorals.- Robert Herrick: To his Muse, A Pastorall upon the birth of Prince Charles, The Hock-Cart, To Phillis to love, and live with him, His content in the Country, A Dialogue. – Francis Quarles: On the Plough-man. – Thomas Carew: To Saxham. – Thomas Randolph: An Ode to Mr Anthony Stafford. – John Milton: L`Allegro, A Mask presented at Ludlow-Castle, Lycidas, Paradise Lost (Books IV, IX). – Sir John Denham: Cooper`s Hill. – Richard Lovelace: Aramantha. A Pastorall. – Abraham Cowley: Of Solitude, The Garden. – Andrew Marvell: Bermudas, The Mower against Gardens, Damon the Mower, Ametas and Thestylis making Hay-Ropes, The Garden.

Augustan Pastoral

Characteristics. Pastoral reflecting decadence and nostalgia in the eyes of the advancing third estate. Countryside is no longer an alternative. Humour interferes, especially in the pastorals of Alexander Pope. Garden is the ultimate pastoral creation, the organization of nature by man into art. Rise of the pastoral burlesque, poet ridiculus the earthy naturalism of earlier pastorals – it is thoroughly urban.

Authors and Works. Charles Cotton: The Retirement. – Thomas Shadwell: The Libertine. – John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: As Chloris full of harmless thought, Fair Chloris in a pigsty lay. – Thomas Flatman: On the Death of the Earl of Rochester. – Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset: Knotting. – Thomas d`Urfey: A Ballad of Andrew and Maudlin. – Thomas Parnell: Health, An Eclogue. – John Philips: Cyder. – Alexander Pope: Pastorals, Ode on Solitude, Windsor Forest, Epistles. – Ambrose Philips: Pastorals. – John Gay: The Shepherd`s Week, The Birth of the Squire. An Eclogue. – Aaron Hill: A Dialogue between Damon and Phyllis. – Matthew Green: The Spleen. - William Sommerville: The Chase. – William Pattison: A Harvest Scene.

Whigs and Post-Augustans

Characteristics. James Thomson publishes his Seasons in 1730: presents his readers with the successful, commercial, polished England of the Whig administrations; English Golden Age refers to the Augustan Age, Thames valley refers to the campagna; prosperity is the fruit of industry and commerce, if labourers occur, they appear to be personifications of industry. Nature must be subjugated by labour-force. Increasing middle-class interest in the practical aspects of rural life: Virgil`s Georgics become first popular then: Joseph Addison`s Essay on the Georgics (1693), georgics by Dyer, Grainger, Smart. Rediscovery of the pessimistic roots of the Pastoral, e. g.: Gray`s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Rise of the Anti-Pastoral: Georg Crabbe`s The Village (1783, first part), Oliver Goldsmith`s The Deserted Village (1770): "the agricultural labourer is brutalized and impoverished".

Authors and Works. James Thomson: The Seasons. – John Armstrong: The Art of Preserving Health. – Richard Jago: The Scavengers. A Town Eclogue. – William Collins: Odes. – Joseph Warton: To Solitude, To Evening. – Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Churchyard. – Christopher Smart: The Hop Garden. – John Dyer: The Fleece. – William Shenstone: On Certain Pastorals, Hope. – John Cunningham: Corydon, Content. – Robert Lloyd: The Cit`s Country Box. – James Grainger: The Sugar-Cane. – William Mason: The English Garden. – John Scott: Moral Eclogues, Rural Business. – John Langhorne: Studley Park. – William Cowper: Retirement. – Thomas Batchelor: The Progress of Agriculture. – Gilbert White: The Naturalist`s Summer-Evening Walk. – Oliver Goldsmith: The Deserted Village. – Stephen Duck: The Thresher`s Labour. – Charles Churchill: The Prophecy of Famine. – George Crabbe: The Village. – William Holloway: The Peasant`s Fate. – John Clare: The Mores, The Lament of Swordy Well. – Ebenezer Elliott: The Splendid Village.

Romantics and Victorians

Characteristics. Wordsworth is among the first to inhabit the wilderness he`s writing about: he populates it with shepherds who live in harmony with nature. "The herdsman lives by understanding the landscape and the elements, the ploughman by conflict with them." John Clare is the son of an agricultural labourer; Stephen Duck and Robert Bloomfield likewise.

Authors and Works. William Cowper: The Task. – James Beattie: The Minstrel. – Robert Burns: The Cotter`s Saturday Night. – William Blake: The Shepherd. – William Wordsworth: Old Man Travelling, The Last of the Flock, The Reverie of Poor Susan, Michael, The Excursion. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement. – Robert Southey: The Ruined Cottage. – Robert Bloomfield: The Famer`s Boy. – John Clare: The Shepherd`s Calendar. – John Keats: Endymion, To Autumn. – Percy Bysshe Shelley: Epipsychidion. – Thomas Hood: Agricultural Distress. – Walter Savage Landor: A Railroad Eclogue. – Alfred Lord Tennyson: The Princess, In Memoriam. – Samuel Palmer: Shoreham: Twilight Time. – Matthew Arnold: Thyrsis. – Gerard Manley Hopkins: Harry Ploughman. – William Butler Yeats: Ancestral Houses. . Thomas Hardy: In Time of the "Breaking of the Nations".