Pastoral

Artists and writers of the Renaissance often portrayed the countryside as a perfect place, far from the corrupt life of the city and the court. This style, known as the pastoral, became one of the most popular forms for art and literature. Such noted Renaissance figures as English playwright William Shakespeare, Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and Flemish* painter Peter Paul Rubens all created works in a pastoral style.

The pastoral developed out of a variety of ancient and medieval* forms. In particular, it drew on the ancient Roman poems called eclogues, which focused on conversations between shepherds. In the 1200s and 1300s, the Italian poets Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio created new Latin works in this form. Later writers produced eclogues in Italian, and in time the pastoral form spread throughout Europe. Artists also adopted pastoral themes in their works, often placing biblical stories in a country setting.

The Renaissance pastoral was not really a single distinct genre*. Writers used pastoral themes in a variety of forms, including poetry, prose, and drama. For example, Italian playwright Giovanni Battista Guarini used the pastoral style in his play The Faithful Shepherd (1590). Guarini believed that the pastoral's rural setting, far removed from the customs of city life, made it an ideal form for social, political, and even sexual experimentation. Other works, such as Cervantes's Don Quixote, combined the pastoral style with elements of the romance* form.

The pastoral became extremely popular in England in the late 1500s. English writers produced many famous pastoral works in a variety of literary forms. Edmund Spenser created a book of eclogues called The Shepheardes Calender and also used pastoral themes in his epic* The Faerie Queene. Philip Sidney produced Arcadia, a pastoral romance, and Shakespeare adopted the pastoral style in his comedy As You Like It.

(See alsoDrama, French; Italian Language and Literature; Poetry, English. )

* Flemish

relating to Flanders, a region along the coasts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands

* medieval

referring to the Middle Ages, a period that began around a.d. 400 and ended around 1400 in Italy and 1500 in the rest of Europe

* genre

literary form

* romance

adventure story of the Middle Ages, the forerunner of the modern novel

* epic

long poem about the adventures of a hero