Pastoral Landscape. A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture.
It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A pastoral is a work of this genre, also known as bucolic, from the Greek, from, meaning a cowherd.
Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place the complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature.
Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature as well as genres. Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, defines pastoral in three ways in his critical book Pastoral.
The first way emphasizes the historical literary perspective of the pastoral in which authors recognize and discuss life in the country and in particular the life of a shepherd. This is summed up by Leo Marx with the phrase No shepherd, no pastoral. The second type of the pastoral is literature that describes the country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban. The third type of pastoral depicts the country life with derogative classifications. Hesiod's Works and
It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A pastoral is a work of this genre, also known as bucolic, from the Greek, from, meaning a cowherd.
Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place the complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature.
Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature as well as genres. Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, defines pastoral in three ways in his critical book Pastoral.
The first way emphasizes the historical literary perspective of the pastoral in which authors recognize and discuss life in the country and in particular the life of a shepherd. This is summed up by Leo Marx with the phrase No shepherd, no pastoral. The second type of the pastoral is literature that describes the country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban. The third type of pastoral depicts the country life with derogative classifications. Hesiod's Works and
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