{"id":2064,"date":"2022-04-07T20:55:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T20:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/?p=2064"},"modified":"2022-09-16T13:52:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T13:52:19","slug":"pastoral-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/pastoral-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Pastoral Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The BC Libraries hope you can take a moment to celebrate the turning of the season towards spring by browsing a selection of pastoral poetry on display in the O\u2019Neill Library lobby, and listening to a few audio samples available at the display via QR code or short link (such as Yeats reading<\/a> “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In
John Constable, The Wheat Field<\/em>, 1816, Oil on canvas. Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007. The Clark Art Institute, 2007.8.27.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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\"Original<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The pastoral poem finds its roots in Hesiod\u2019s Works and Days<\/em>, celebrating the simple country lives and loves of shepherds in beautiful natural settings. Theocritus\u2019 Idylls<\/em> is most often cited as the earnest beginning, though it was Virgil’s Eclogues<\/em> and Georgics<\/em> that influenced later European poetry<\/a>. The genre was revived in late medieval Italy, and then in 16th Century England by Spenser\u2019s The Shepherds Calendar<\/em>. What typifies these\u2013and many contemporary & subsequent\u2013works is the urban poet\u2019s fascination with an idealized version of pure, rustic country life, often involving cycles of seasons in the natural and agricultural worlds, and loves or desires won and lost, and often employed as allegory or a vehicle for commentary on politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Winters wrath beginnes to quell,
And pleasant spring appeareth.
The grasse nowe ginnes to be refresht,
The Swallow peepes out of her nest,
And clowdie Welkin cleareth.<\/p>Edmund Spenser<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Though not directly related to this genealogy, the Indian saint-poets Mirabai, Surdas, and Jayadeva were writing pastoral-adjacent poems in the 12th-16th centuries in India about the lusty shepherd god Krishna and his amorous exploits with girl cowherds. These poems\u2013still often sung as devotional songs in temples\u2013evoke the sense of rural innocence typical of pastorals, and also often involve the cycles of seasons and love and longing.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"book<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The genre remained a staple of English lyric poetry through the mid-18th Century, with Alexander Pope, Robert Herrick, Margaret Cavendish, and John Milton adding their endeavors, among many others. For a comprehensive collection of English pastoral poems, see the open access book, Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance: An Anthology<\/em><\/a> (ed. Sukanta Chaudhury). Percy Bysshe Shelley brought the genre into the 19th century with Adonais<\/em>, an elegy to John Keats. Matthew Arnold commemorated his friend Arthur Clough in \u201cThyrsis,\u201d and on the cusp of the 20th Century Gerard Manley Hopkins created his verbally dazzling lyrics about the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Book<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In the 20th and 21st centuries, many poets have experimented with pastoral themes. (The word appears in titles of many poems<\/a> at poetryfoundation.org) Some have found inspiration by exploring similar poetry from elsewhere, such as Gary Snyder, who was deeply influenced by the Tang Dynasty poetry of Han Shan (aka Cold Mountain) and Du Fu. Langston Hughes, Hayden Carruth, David Budbill, Derek Walcott, Louise Erdrich, and Maxine Kumin, among others, have all explored what it means to represent real and complicated rural lives (or island life, in Walcott\u2019s case).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The BC Libraries hope you can take a moment to celebrate the turning of the season towards spring by browsing a selection of pastoral poetry on display in the O\u2019Neill Library lobby, and listening to a few audio samples available…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":2065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"series":[],"coauthors":[33],"class_list":["post-2064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2064"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2251,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions\/2251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2064"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=2064"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}