Pastoral Poetry

1
Pastoral Poetry

• 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.

2
Common Topics

• Love and seduction
• The value of poetry
• Death and mourning
• The corruption of the city or court vs the
  purity of idealized country life
• Politics (shepherds critique society or easily
  identifiable political figures)
• Eclogues (a dialogue between two shepherds)

3
Pastoral Elegy

• Expresses the poets grief at the loss of a
  friend or important person
• Praise for the dead shepherd
• Effects of death upon nature
• The poets acceptance of the inevitability of
  death and the hope for immortality

4
Famous Pastoral Poetry

• Christopher Marlowes A Passionate Shepherd to
  His Love
• Sir Walter Raleighs The Nymphs Reply to the
  Shepherd

5
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

• Carpe diem and immediate gratification of their
  sexual passions
• Love in the countryside will be like a return to
  the Garden of Eden
• There is a tradition that our problems are caused
  by having too many restrictions by society
• If we get away from these rules, we can return to
  the pristine condition of happiness
• If the nymph would go a maying with the shepherd,
  they would have the perfect life!

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• In quatrains
• Iambic tetrameter
• The shepherd invites his love to experience the
  joys of nature
• He hopes to return with the nymph to an Edenic
  life of free love in nature

7
The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd

• Raleigh argues that because time flies, we should
  not seize the day
• There could be consequences to their roll in the
  grass
• Time does not stand still winter inevitably
  follows spring therefore,we cannot act on
  impulses until we have examined the consequences

8
The nymph reverses his images

• Rocks grow cold
• Fields yield to the harvest
• The flocks re driven to fold in winter
• Rivers rage
• Birds complain
• Free love is impossible
• The seasons pass as does time
• Nymphs grow old, and shepherds grow cold