The Pastoral
F06
April Bernard
One of the most ancient of all Western literary forms, the pastoral is nonetheless suffused with nostalgia for an even earlier, better time—a mythic Golden Age. We will read the incomparably lovely poems of Theocritus and Virgil in the pastoral mode, explore accounts of the Golden Age in Ovid and other sources, and trace the history of the pastoral’s singing, piping, cheese-eating, love-lorn shepherds through the Western tradition (Sydney, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, et alia), up to its most vivid incarantions in the present day in contemporary lyric verse, fiction, and children’s literature. There will be short papers, one class presentation, and one long paper; additionally, students will write a few verse exercises.