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An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics. The term is also used for a musical genre thought of as evoking a pastoral scene.
The form of the word eclogue in contemporary English developed from Middle English eclog, which came from Latin ecloga, which came from Greek eklogē (ἐκλογή) in the sense 'selection, literary product' (which was only one of the meanings it had in Greek). [1] The term was applied metaphorically to short writings in any genre, including parts of a poetic sequence or poetry book.
As a genre of poetry, Eclogues began with the Latin poet Virgil, whose collection of ten Eclogae was ultimately modelled on the Idylls of Theocritus. [2] and was alternatively termed Bucolica. [3] Found there was a sophisticated mixture of pastoral dialogues, song contests and contemporary references. Virgil's term was used by later Latin poets such as Calpurnius Siculus and Nemesianus to refer to their own pastoral poetry, often in imitation of Virgil, while the first of these also employed rustic vocabulary and archaic expressions to add to their distancing effect. [4]
The practice of writing eclogues was extended by the 15th century Italian humanists Baptista Mantuanus and Jacopo Sannazaro whose Latin poetry was imitated in a variety of European vernaculars during the Renaissance, including in English. However, "the first Renaissance bucolic poem written in England" was a 1497 eclogue in Latin by Johannes Opicius in praise of Henry VII. Written in the form of a dialogue between the shepherds Mopsus and Melibœus, praising the ruler of the country from bringing back a Golden Age of prosperity and safety, the poem was modelled on the first of Virgil's Eclogues in praise of Octavian and the first eclogue by Calpurnius Siculus in praise of Nero. [5] So far as is known, the poem remained in manuscript and even the first eclogues written in the English language by Alexander Barclay remained unpublished until about 1514. These were written earlier and adapted from 15th century Latin originals by Mantuanus and Aeneas Silvius. [6]
Edmund Spenser was also inspired by Mantuan's eclogues, as well as by Virgil and Theocritus, when he composed the Shepheardes Calendar (1579), a series of twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year. [7] Each is titled an Aegloga and contains for the most part dialogues by different speakers on a variety of subjects. In the background too is the example of Calpurnius, manifested here in the antiquated vocabulary drawn from John Skelton and Geoffrey Chaucer. And behind the plain (but far from unlettered) language is vigorous allusion to contemporary events, particularly the proposed marriage between the queen and a Catholic Frenchman. [8] Spenser's eclogues were youthful work, as were Alexander Pope's Pastorals, consisting of four shepherd dialogues divided between the seasons. They were originally composed in 1704 but first published in 1709; [9] and to the 1717 edition, Pope added his originally intended "Discourse on Pastoral Poetry" in which he acknowledged the examples of Theocritus and Virgil ("the only undisputed authors of Pastoral") along with Spenser. [10]
In between had come Phineas Fletcher's Piscatorie Eclogs (1633), imitations of Sannazaro's much earlier Eclogae Piscatoriae (Fishermen's eclogues, 1526), in which the traditional shepherds are exchanged for fishermen from the Bay of Naples. [11] He was followed in this refocussing of the traditional subject matter in the following century by William Diaper, in whose Nereides: or Sea-Eclogues (1712) the speakers are sea-gods and sea-nymphs. [12]
By the early 18th century, the pastoral genre was ripe for renewal and an element of parody began to be introduced. John Gay ridiculed the eclogues of Ambrose Philips in the six 'pastorals' of The Shepherd's Week. [13] The impulse to renewal and parody also met in the various "town eclogues" published at this time, transferring their focus from the fields to city preoccupations. The first was a joint publication by Jonathan Swift and his friends in The Tatler for 1710; [14] John Gay wrote three more, as well as The Espousal, "a sober eclogue between two of the people called Quakers"; [15] and Mary Wortley Montagu began writing a further six Town Eclogues from 1715. [16]
In Scotland Allan Ramsay brought the novelty of Scots dialect to his two pastoral dialogues of 1723, "Patie and Roger" [17] and "Jenny and Meggy", [17] before expanding them into the pastoral drama of The Gentle Shepherd in the following year. Later the eclogue was further renewed by being set in exotic lands, first by the Persian Eclogues (1742) of William Collins, a revised version of which titled Oriental Eclogues was published in 1757. [18] It was followed by the three African Eclogues (1770) of Thomas Chatterton, [19] and by Scott of Amwell's three Oriental Eclogues (1782) with settings in Arabia, Bengal and Tang dynasty China. [20]
In 1811 the fortunes of the Peninsular War brought the subject back to Europe in the form of four Spanish Eclogues, including an elegy on the death of the Marquis de la Romana issued under the pseudonym Hispanicus. [21] These were described in a contemporary review as "formed on the model of Collins". [22] In the following decade they were followed by a vernacular "Irish eclogue", Darby and Teague, a satirical account of a royal visit to Dublin ascribed to William Russell Macdonald (1787–1854). [23]
The term eclogue or its equivalents was eventually applied to pastoral music, with the first significant examples being piano works by the Czech composer Václav Tomášek. [24] 19th century composers who adopted the title include Jan Václav Voříšek for piano; [25] Franz Liszt, "Eglogue", the seventh piece in the first book of Années de Pèlerinage , 1842); [26] César Franck, "Eglogue", op. 3, 1842, [27] as well as the later eighth movement of the oratorio Ruth (1882), titled eglogue biblique, a setting of the words of Alexandre Guillemin; [28] [29] Antonín Dvořák, "4 eclogues for piano", Op. 56, 1880; [30] Vítězslav Novák, Eklogen, Op. 11 for piano, 1896; [31] and Mel Bonis, "Eglogue" for piano, Op. 12, 1898. [32]
Two further pieces for solo piano followed in the new century: Egon Wellesz's "4 eclogues", Op. 11, 1912, [33] and Jean Sibelius's Ekloge, the first of his "4 lyric pieces for piano", Op. 74, 1914. [34] Similar titles were given the second and third movements of Igor Stravinsky's Duo Concertant ("Eclogue I" and "Eclogue II", 1932), while the middle movement of his three-movement Ode (1943) is also titled "Eclogue". Gerald Finzi's "Eclogue" for piano and string orchestra, Op. 10, was revised in the 1940s and given that title then. [35] An "Eclogue" for horn and strings by Maurice Blower dates from about the 1950s. [36] In the 21st century, American composer Henry Justin Rubin's Egloga for violin and piano dates from 2006. [37]
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and he is considered one of the great poets in the English language.
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems to be dubious.
Theocritus was a Greek poet from Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry.
Jacopo Sannazaro was an Italian poet, humanist, member and head of the Accademia Pontaniana from Naples.
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre. A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale.
Titus Calpurnius Siculus was a Roman bucolic poet. Eleven eclogues have been handed down to us under his name, of which the last four, from metrical considerations and express manuscript testimony, are now generally attributed to Nemesianus, who lived in the time of the emperor Carus and his sons. The separate authorship of the eclogues of Calpurnius and Nemesianus was established by Haupt.
Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of unspoiled wilderness. Arcadia is a poetic term associated with bountiful natural splendor and harmony. The 'Garden' is often inhabited by shepherds. The concept also figures in Renaissance mythology. Although commonly thought of as being in line with Utopian ideals, Arcadia differs from that tradition in that it is more often specifically regarded as unattainable. Furthermore, it is seen as a lost, Edenic form of life, contrasting to the progressive nature of Utopian desires.
The Eclogues, also called the Bucolics, is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil.
The Shepheardes Calender was Edmund Spenser's first major poetic work, published in 1579. In emulation of Virgil's first work, the Eclogues, Spenser wrote this series of pastorals at the commencement of his career. However, Spenser's models were rather the Renaissance eclogues of Mantuanus. The title, like the entire work, is written using deliberately archaic spellings, in order to suggest a connection to medieval literature, and to Geoffrey Chaucer in particular. Spenser dedicated the poem to Philip Sidney. The poem introduces Colin Clout, a folk character originated by John Skelton, and depicts his life as a shepherd through the twelve months of the year. The Calender encompasses considerable formal innovations, anticipating the even more virtuosic Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, the classic pastoral romance by Sir Philip Sidney, with whom Spenser was acquainted. It is also remarkable for the extensive commentary or gloss included with the work in its first publication, ascribed to an "E.K." E.K. is an intelligent, very subtle, sometimes wrong, and often deeply ironic commentator, who is sometimes assumed to be an alias of Spenser himself. The term sarcasm (Sarcasmus) is first recorded in English in Spenser's poem (October).
Baptista Spagnuoli Mantuanus, O.Carm was an Italian Carmelite reformer, humanist, and poet.
"Thyrsis" is a poem written by Matthew Arnold in December 1865 to commemorate his friend, the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, who had died in November 1861 aged only 42.
Corydon is a stock name for a herdsman in ancient Greek pastoral poems and fables, and in much later European literature.
The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to expressing grief at a loss. This form of poetry has several key features, including the invocation of the Muse, expression of the shepherd's, or poet's, grief, praise of the deceased, a tirade against death, a detailing of the effects of this specific death upon nature, and eventually, the poet's simultaneous acceptance of death's inevitability and hope for immortality. Additional features sometimes found within pastoral elegies include a procession of mourners, satirical digressions about different topics stemming from the death, and symbolism through flowers, refrains, and rhetorical questions. The pastoral elegy is typically incredibly moving and in its most classic form, it concerns itself with simple, country figures. In ordinary pastoral poems, the shepherd is the poem's main character. In pastoral elegies, the deceased is often recast as a shepherd, despite what his role may have been in life. Further, after being recast as a shepherd, the deceased is often surrounded by classical mythology figures, such as nymphs, fauns, etc. Pastoral elegy is one of the forms of poems in Elizabethan poetry.
The Eclogues is a collection of Latin poetry attributed to Calpurnius Siculus and inspired by the similarly named poems of the Augustan-age poet Virgil.
The Eclogues is a book of four Latin poems, attributed to Marcus Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus.
The Einsiedeln Eclogues are two Latin pastoral poems, written in hexameters. They were discovered in a tenth century manuscript from Einsiedeln Abbey and first published in 1869, by H. Hagen.
Eclogue 2 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of a series of ten poems known as the Eclogues. In this Eclogue the herdsman Corydon laments his inability to win the affections of the young Alexis. It is an imitation of the eleventh Idyll of Theocritus, in which the Cyclops Polyphemus laments the cruelty of the sea-nymph Galatea. After a 5-line introduction, the rest of the poem consists of a single speech by Corydon. The poem has 73 lines, and is written in the dactylic hexameter metre.
Eclogue 9 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, one of his series of ten poems known as the Eclogues. This eclogue describes the meeting of two countrymen Lycidas and Moeris. Moeris has been turned out of his farm and is taking some kid goats to town for the new occupant; young Lycidas is astonished, for he had heard that Menalcas had secured the safety of the district by his poetry, but Moeris replies that, so far from that being so, he and Menalcas himself had barely escaped with their lives: they then proceed to recall passages of Menalcas' poetry. Lycidas wants to continue singing to lighten the journey but the distressed Moeris begs him to cease, promising that they will sing again when Menalcas returns.
Eclogue 10 is a pastoral poem by the Latin poet Virgil, the last of his book of ten poems known as the Eclogues written approximately 42–39 BC. The tenth Eclogue describes how Cornelius Gallus, a Roman officer on active service, having been jilted by his girlfriend Lycoris, is imagined as an Arcadian shepherd, and either bewails his lot or seeks distraction in hunting "with the Nymphs" amid "Parthenian glades" and "hurling Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow".
Idyll V, sometimes called Αιπολικόν και Ποιμενικόν, is a bucolic poem by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Theocritus. This Idyll begins with a ribald debate between two hirelings, who, at last, compete with each other in a match of pastoral song. The scene is in Southern Italy.
The form of the "Eclogue," or pastoral poem, has a certain traditional significance for Czech musicians. The name as applied to a musical piece seems to have originated with the famous ultra-conservative Bohemian pedagogue, Václav Tomašek, 1774-1850, who, departing from the conventional classic path of the sonata, allowed his fancy free play in a series of lyrical pieces for pianoforte called Eclogues (1807), Rhapsodies (1810) and Dithyrambs (1818). Dvořák adopted the title of Eclogue for one of his pianoforte works and Šín has carried it down to contemporary music in the pleasant idyll published in the Album.
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