What is Pastoral Literature?

English Literature Literature Poetry

Andy Cain

MA, English Literature (University College London)

Date Published: 06.05.2024,

Last Updated: 06.05.2024

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Table of contents

Introducing pastoral literature

Rolling hills, gentle streams, noble shepherds, and maybe a gamboling nymph or two: These are the classic hallmarks of pastoral literature. Pastoral literature had its beginnings with the poetic and idealized descriptions of shepherds’ lives in harmony with nature. It has since gathered a wider range of meanings and associations, usually founded on the key dynamic between the corruption of urban life and the innocence of rural life. The pastoral is a mode of literature that can appear in a wide array of other genres (such as fantasy and historical fiction). In its earlier appearances, pastoral literature exhibited such a common set of characteristics that it was, arguably, a genre in its own right. As Terry Gifford explains in Pastoral,

pastoral up to about 1610 was to refer to poems or dramas of a specific formal type in which supposed shepherds spoke to each other, usually in pentameter verse, about their work or their loves, with apparently idealised descriptions of their countryside. This form of writing was so recognisably pastoral that it might almost be called a genre. (2019)

Pastoral

Terry Gifford

pastoral up to about 1610 was to refer to poems or dramas of a specific formal type in which supposed shepherds spoke to each other, usually in pentameter verse, about their work or their loves, with apparently idealised descriptions of their countryside. This form of writing was so recognisably pastoral that it might almost be called a genre. (2019)

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Gifford also explains, however, that

there is a broader use of pastoral to refer to an area of content. In this sense pastoral refers to any literature that describes the country as providing an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban. (2019)

In pastoral literature, the countryside is rendered in an idealized form — commonly infused with nostalgia for a bucolic life of simple innocence that may or may not have actually existed. This vision is often contrasted, whether explicitly or implicitly, with an urban life of chaos and corruption which the writer yearns to escape from. As Gifford argues, pastoral literature often exhibits

some form of retreat and return, either within the text, or in the sense that the pastoral retreat returned some insights relevant to the urban or court readership. (2019)

This rural/urban dynamic is key, as it underlines much pastoral literature. To loosely identify some of pastoral literature’s most common characteristics then:

The countryside is often idealized as a space of innocence, purity, simplicity, and beauty.
There is an awareness of the shortcomings of urban life — commonly characterized as dirty, corrupt, soulless, and unfulfilling.
Rural life is often represented as the last staging post of humanity’s lost innocence — harking back to a lost golden age, associated with the mythical utopia of “Arcadia”. This sense of loss can be pervasive, as Arcadia is often not presented as a realistic prospect that can be regained.

In the following sections, we will discuss some of the debates around pastoral literature, review its historical outline, and explore some specific examples.

Key debates

A significant criticism of pastoral literature is that it is not genuinely pastoral at all — that it is written by, and for, urban audiences. Sukanta Chaudhuri argues,

Pastoral is the most disingenuous of literary modes. It is neither folk literature nor popular literature, though it can incorporate elements of one or the other. It does not usually emanate from a rustic source. It is essentially a fiction of rural life created by people who do not live it. (A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance, 2018)

The Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance book cover

A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance

Sukanta Chaudhuri

Pastoral is the most disingenuous of literary modes. It is neither folk literature nor popular literature, though it can incorporate elements of one or the other. It does not usually emanate from a rustic source. It is essentially a fiction of rural life created by people who do not live it. (A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance, 2018)

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If pastoral literature is an idealized vision of country life, then, what does this mean for country life in reality? Is the truth distorted and neglected by pastoral visions which fail to represent and challenge the real issues that affect real people? As Jonathan Bate outlines in Romantic Ecology,

For modern criticism […] pastoral poetry is historically and socially specific. […] [I]t is not really written by shepherds, it is a comforting aristocratic fantasy that covers up the real conditions of oppression and exploitation in feudal and neo-feudal agrarian economies. Raymond Williams writes with honest indignation: ‘It is not easy to forget that Sidney’s Arcadia, which gives a continuing title to English neo-pastoral, was written in a park which had been made by enclosing a whole village and evicting the tenants.’ (2013)

Romantic Ecology

Jonathan Bate

For modern criticism […] pastoral poetry is historically and socially specific. […] [I]t is not really written by shepherds, it is a comforting aristocratic fantasy that covers up the real conditions of oppression and exploitation in feudal and neo-feudal agrarian economies. Raymond Williams writes with honest indignation: ‘It is not easy to forget that Sidney’s Arcadia, which gives a continuing title to English neo-pastoral, was written in a park which had been made by enclosing a whole village and evicting the tenants.’ (2013)

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Is pastoral literature hopelessly naive, then, and not sufficiently reflective of the problems of reality? Does it still serve a valuable purpose? In Art as Therapy, Alain de Botton and John Armstrong argue that

It's a loss if we condemn all art that is gracious and sweet as sentimental and in denial. In fact, such work can only affect us because we know what reality is usually like. (2016)

Expanding on this, de Botton and Armstrong explain:

Far from taking too rosy and sentimental a view, most of the time we suffer from excessive gloom. We are only too aware of the problems and injustices of the world – it's just that we feel debilitatingly small and weak in the face of them. Cheerfulness is an achievement, and hope is something to celebrate. (2016)

Despite the concerns raised about pastoral literature’s elision of real-world problems, its very naivety might actually serve a redemptive purpose — providing us with a cheering glimpse of a better world.

In Arcadia Updated, Marius Fiskevold and Anne Katrine Geelmuyden put forward another argument in defense of pastoral literature:

One fundamental source of landscape meaning is the tradition of cultural pastorals in Western art. As pastoral heritage, any landscape is imbued with humans’ dreams and aspirations concerning the relationship between humanity and nature. […] Imaging a landscape is a way of seeing the land, which creatively plays out humanity’s existential liminality in relation to nature as the distinctly Other. It is a world where humans can develop their passion for belonging. (2018)

Arcadia Updated

Marius Fiskevold and Anne Katrine Geelmuyden

One fundamental source of landscape meaning is the tradition of cultural pastorals in Western art. As pastoral heritage, any landscape is imbued with humans’ dreams and aspirations concerning the relationship between humanity and nature. […] Imaging a landscape is a way of seeing the land, which creatively plays out humanity’s existential liminality in relation to nature as the distinctly Other. It is a world where humans can develop their passion for belonging. (2018)

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For Fiskevold and Geelmuyden, then, pastoral literature plays an important role in our construction of a meaningful relationship with the landscape around us.

Examples throughout history

Some of the earliest literary appearances of pastoral themes can be found in Hesiod’s Works and Days (c. 700 BCE), particularly with its depiction of a mythical “Golden Age” in which humanity lived in perfect unity with nature. Theocritus is another ancient Greek poet often identified with the beginnings of pastoral literature. As Gifford argues,

The literary form originates in the Idylls of Theocritus (c.316–260) […]. For the sophisticated and decadent court at Alexandria, Theocritus wrote a series of poems, based upon the shepherds’ song competitions in his native Sicily, that he titled the Idylls. For the writer this was a poetry of nostalgia to set against his present life which was actually that of an Alexandrian scholar. What is offered to his patron is a vision of simplicity of life in contact with nature that is vividly evoked with the artifice of poetry […]. (2019)

Pastoral

Terry Gifford

The literary form originates in the Idylls of Theocritus (c.316–260) […]. For the sophisticated and decadent court at Alexandria, Theocritus wrote a series of poems, based upon the shepherds’ song competitions in his native Sicily, that he titled the Idylls. For the writer this was a poetry of nostalgia to set against his present life which was actually that of an Alexandrian scholar. What is offered to his patron is a vision of simplicity of life in contact with nature that is vividly evoked with the artifice of poetry […]. (2019)

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Gifford highlights, however, that Theocritus actually “retains a strong and often amusing strain of realism throughout the Idylls” — the shepherds are acutely aware of the tasks that they must fulfill, as well as the dangers of going barefoot in the thorny landscape. The Idylls, then, may not be as “idyllic” as we might assume:

the strong presence of labour in the Idylls is rather ironic since this title has given us the term ‘idyllic’ which has come to be associated with the pastoral. The word ‘idyll’ derives from the Greek eidyllion, meaning a small picture, and characterises a short poem of idealised description. (Gifford, 2019)

Theocritus set his pastoral visions in Arcadia, which, as well as being a real region of Greece, was regarded in Greek mythology as the home of the god Pan and other supernatural entities such as nymphs.

Alongside Theocritus, Virgil is regarded as the most significant figure in the pastoral literature of antiquity. In keeping with his status as the most famous ancient Roman poet, Virgil had a seismic influence on the history of Western literature (particularly with the Renaissance). Inspired by Theocritus, Virgil’s Eclogues (c. 44–38 BCE) established many of pastoral literature’s defining characteristics: the vision of an unspoiled Arcadia, the shepherds’ life of innocence and simplicity, and the uneasy dynamic between rural and urban life. Virgil’s pastoral poetry is also infused with political and social concerns, which encroach on the rural idyll.

Although pastoral themes were far from absent in the literature of the Middle Ages, pastoral literature really bloomed with the Renaissance in Europe and the many imitations of Virgil’s Eclogues which then appeared. The work of the Italian poet Mantuan was particularly influential on the proliferation of English pastoral literature in the sixteenth century, with contributing writers including Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare, among others. Many of Shakespeare’s plays are infused with pastoral elements, with As You Like It (c. 1599) chief among them. Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender (1579) is one of the most influential pastoral works from this period, and Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (1599) is one of the most famous pastoral poems of all. Its opening lines, in which a shepherd paints a picture of pastoral bliss for his beloved, are often cited:

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
(Marlowe, 1599, [2012])

Complete Poems

Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That valleys, groves, hills and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

(Marlowe, 1599, [2012])

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With its description of simple love and contentment amidst nature, Marlowe’s poem conveys the pastoral spirit in a distilled form.

Moving into the seventeenth century, John Milton’s pastoral elegy “Lycidas” (1638) represents a significant pastoral moment, alongside his monumental epic Paradise Lost (1667) with its focus on the lost Garden of Eden. Although pastoral literature was declining in popularity by the eighteenth century, Alexander Pope’s Pastorals (1709) are worth mentioning here. Romantic literature, which arose from the end of the eighteenth century, then engaged with pastoralism through its intense idealization of the natural world.

The Romantic poet William Wordsworth, in particular, is noted for his development of pastoralism in poems which meditate on his beloved Lake District in Cumbria, England. Gifford argues that, in works such as The Prelude (1850), Wordworth’s portrayal of the shepherd subverts “the patronising simplification of a common pastoral convention of the rural worker as bucolic clown” — instead, Wordsworth’s shepherds possess “a maturity, integrity and dignity that is both produced by his work and extends beyond it” (2019). Wordsworth’s shepherds belong to a very different landscape than that of their classical counterparts, and the nature of the pastoral here is not so much beautiful as sublime:

[Wordsworth] is constantly aware that his contemporaries more usually move under skies less generous and serene than those of the ancient Mediterranean, in landscapes of wintry snows, hard labour, terrifying winds and an overawing solitude. In the poet’s idealizing imagination, the actual Shepherd assumes a giant shape: he becomes, beheld single against the sky, ‘A solitary object and sublime’. (Peter V. Marinelli, Pastoral, 2017)

Pastoral

Peter V. Marinelli

[Wordsworth] is constantly aware that his contemporaries more usually move under skies less generous and serene than those of the ancient Mediterranean, in landscapes of wintry snows, hard labour, terrifying winds and an overawing solitude. In the poet’s idealizing imagination, the actual Shepherd assumes a giant shape: he becomes, beheld single against the sky, ‘A solitary object and sublime’. (Peter V. Marinelli, Pastoral, 2017)

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We have only sketched a brief outline of pastoral literature’s far-reaching influence throughout history here. For more detail, the further reading section at the end of this guide is a good place to start exploring Perlego’s extensive coverage of the topic.

Pastoral literature today

Pastoralism still holds a place in our collective imagination. In The Environmental Imagination, Lawrence Buell argues that

Insofar as some form of pastoralism is part of the conceptual apparatus of all persons with western educations interested in leading more nature-sensitive lives, it is to be expected that pastoralism will be part of the unavoidable ground-condition of most of those who read this book. (1996)

The Environmental Imagination

Lawrence Buell

Insofar as some form of pastoralism is part of the conceptual apparatus of all persons with western educations interested in leading more nature-sensitive lives, it is to be expected that pastoralism will be part of the unavoidable ground-condition of most of those who read this book. (1996)

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In Buell’s view, pastoralism has become an intrinsic part of us, and it represents “a species of cultural equipment that western thought has for more than two millennia been unable to do without” (1996).

Marinelli agrees that pastoralism does still exert an influence today, but he stresses that “pastoral” has now become a “very broad and very general term”:

For us it has come to mean any literature which deals with the complexities of human life against a background of simplicity. All that is necessary is that memory and imagination should conspire to render a not too distant past of comparative innocence as more pleasurable than a harsh present, overwhelmed either by the growth of technology or the shadows of advancing age. (2017)

In Marinelli’s view, this broader sense of pastoralism gains increasing currency as civilization continues to erode natural landscapes, which become “as a consequence daily more precious as a projection of our desires for simplicity” (2017). As the environmental crisis accelerates with each passing year, critics such as Gifford argue that “there is [...] a strong sense that the environmental movement is producing a revival of interest in the writing of new pastoral literature” (2019). On contemporary British writing in particular, for example, Deborah Lilley argues that

the latest iteration of pastoral to emerge [...] is sparked by and shaped – re-formed – around environmental crisis. Pastoral’s conceptions of the human and the natural, the country and the city, the past and the present, and the relationships between them are challenged by the uncertainties that environmental changes bring. (The New Pastoral in Contemporary British Writing, 2019)

The New Pastoral in Contemporary British Writing book cover

Deborah Lilley

the latest iteration of pastoral to emerge [...] is sparked by and shaped – re-formed – around environmental crisis. Pastoral’s conceptions of the human and the natural, the country and the city, the past and the present, and the relationships between them are challenged by the uncertainties that environmental changes bring. (The New Pastoral in Contemporary British Writing, 2019)

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The pastoralism of today is closely related to ecocriticism and climate fiction. In Octavia E. Butler’s climate fiction novel The Parable of the Sower (1993), for example, there is a profound focus on the importance of community and harmony with nature amidst environmental breakdown and urban decay. While the desire for a simple life in nature is still present in contemporary literature, this is now overshadowed by the unavoidable realization that climate change represents an existential threat to our collective rural idyll.

Bibliography

Alpers, P. (2011) What Is Pastoral? The University of Chicago Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1842518/what-is-pastoral-pdf

Bate, J. (2013) Romantic Ecology. Taylor & Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1678482/romantic-ecology-routledge-revivals-wordsworth-and-the-environmental-tradition-pdf

Borris, K. (ed.) (2022) Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender (1579). Manchester University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3284294/edmund-spensers-shepheardes-calender-1579-an-analyzed-facsimile-edition-pdf

Buell, L. (1996) The Environmental Imagination. Harvard University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/2648082/the-environmental-imagination-thoreau-nature-writing-and-the-formation-of-american-culture-pdf

Butler, O. (2019) The Parable of the Sower. Headline.

Chaudhuri, S. (2018) A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance. Manchester University Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1526570/a-companion-to-pastoral-poetry-of-the-english-renaissance-pdf

de Botton, A. and Armstrong, J. (2016) Art as Therapy. Phaidon Press Limited.

Fiskevold, M. and Geelmuyden, A. K. (2018) Arcadia Updated. Taylor and Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1380886/arcadia-updated-raising-landscape-awareness-through-analytical-narratives-pdf

Gifford, T. (2019) Pastoral. Taylor & Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1570516/pastoral-pdf

Hesiod (2017) The Poems of Hesiod. University of California Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/551202/the-poems-of-hesiod-pdf

Lilley, D. (2019) The New Pastoral in Contemporary British Writing. Taylor & Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1379188/the-new-pastoral-in-contemporary-british-writing-pdf

Little, K. C. (2013) Transforming Work. University of Notre Dame Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/856186/transforming-work-early-modern-pastoral-and-late-medieval-poetry-pdf

Marinelli, P. (2017) Pastoral. Taylor & Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1489495/pastoral-pdf

Marlowe, C. (2012) Complete Poems. Dover Publications. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1443975/complete-poems-pdf
Milton, J. (1996) L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas. Perlego. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1847658/lallegro-il-penseroso-comus-and-lycidas-pdf

Milton, J. (2014) Milton: Paradise Lost. 2nd edn. Edited by Alastair Fowler. Taylor and Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1555316/milton-paradise-lost-pdf

Pope, A. (2019) The Poems of Alexander Pope: Volume One. Edited by Julian Ferraro and Paul Baines. Taylor & Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1561754/the-poems-of-alexander-pope-volume-one-pdf

Shakespeare, W. (2015) As You Like It. Folger Shakespeare Library. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/781910/as-you-like-it-pdf

Theocritus (2004) Theocritus, translated into English Verse. Perlego. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1713574/theocritus-translated-into-english-verse-pdf

Virgil (2011) Virgil’s Eclogues. University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/732149/virgils-eclogues-pdf

Wordsworth, W. (2020) The Prelude - An Autobiographical Poem. Read Books Ltd. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1383327/the-prelude-an-autobiographical-poem-pdf

Andy Cain

MA, English Literature (University College London)

Andy Cain has an MA in English Literature from University College London, and a BA in English and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. His particular research interests include science fiction, fantasy, and the philosophy of art. For his MA dissertation, he explored the presence of the sublime in Shakespeare’s plays.