Pastoral - Literary Terms
Pastoral - Literary Terms
Pastoral is a musical composition dealing with a pastoral subject and portraying pastoral scenes. It is a poem describing the life and manners of shepherds, or in which the characters are shepherds and shepherdesses. In general it refers to a poem which deals with country or country life. The third century B.C. Greek poet Theocritus wrote the first pastorals representing the life of Sicilian shepherds.
Virgil later imitated Theocritus in his Latin Eclogues, and in doing so established the enduring model for the traditional pastoral. Wordworth’s “Michael” is a pastoral poem.
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