Pastoral

:For other uses, see Pastoral (disambiguation).

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Pastoral refers to the lifestyle of shepherds and pastoralists, moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability of water and feed.

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In art, be it literature, painting, or another form, it refers to rural subjects such as villages, herdsmen, and milkmaids, that are romanticized and depicted in a highly unrealistic manner.

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The pastoral genre was invented in the Hellenistic era by the Sicilian poet Theocritus, who may have drawn on authentic folk traditions of Sicilian shepherds. The Roman poet Virgil adopted the invention and wrote eclogues, which are poems on rustic and bucolic subjects, that set an example for the pastoral mood in literature. Later pastoral poets, such as Edmund Spenser and William Wordsworth, typically looked to the classical pastoral poets for inspiration. A typical mood is set by Christopher Marlowe's well known lines from "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love":

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:Come live with me and be my Love,

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:And we will all the pleasures prove

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:That hills and valleys, dale and field,

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:And all the craggy mountains yield.

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:There will we sit upon the rocks

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:And see the shepherds feed their flocks,

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:By shallow rivers, to whose falls

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:Melodious birds sing madrigals.

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Pastoral shepherds and maidens usually had Greek names like Poliphilus or Philomela. Pastoral poems were often set in Arcadia, a rural region of Greece, mythological home of the god Pan, which was portrayed as a sort of Eden by the poets. The tasks of their employment with sheep and other rustic chores were held in the fantasy to be almost wholly undemanding and backgrounded, and to leave the shepherdesses and their swains in a state of almost perfect leisure. This made them available for embodying perpetual erotic fantasies. The shepherds spent their time chasing pretty girls --- or, at least in the Greek and Roman versions, pretty lads as well. The eroticism of Virgil's second eclogue, Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin ("The shepherd Corydon burned with passion for pretty Alexis") is entirely homosexual.

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A harsher note was struck in Girolamo Fracastoro's 1530 poem Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus ("Syphilis, or the French Disease"), in which Syphilus ("pig-lover"), a typical pastoral name for a shepherd, is stricken by the disease syphilis that takes its name from Fracastoro's poem. Fracastoro's poem contains the first recognisable description of the symptoms of syphilis; today, far too few contemporary physicians announce their discoveries in verse, pastoral or otherwise. Fracastoro has Syphilus the shepherd catch it for having offended Apollo, a somewhat unusual method of infection. Fracastoro's Latin poem was much admired in its day; it was translated into English heroic couplets by Nahum Tate:

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:A shepherd once (distrust not ancient fame)

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:Possest these Downs, and Syphilus his Name;

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:Some destin'd Head t'attone the Crimes of all,

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:On Syphilus the dreadful Lot did fall.

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:Through what adventures this unknown Disease

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:So lately did astonisht Europe seize,

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:Through Asian coasts and Libyan Cities ran,

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:And from what Seeds the Malady began,

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:Our Song shall tell: to Naples first it came

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:From France, and justly took from France his Name. . .

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Pastoral paintings, likewise, were typically used to give the respectability of the classics to paintings of nymphs, swains, satyrs, and other mostly human legendary creatures frolicking in neatly tended hills and woods in a state of perpetual déshabillé. In contemporary times, it is a whole genre of sexual fantasy that fell almost completely out of fashion.

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See also: Et in Arcadia ego, the end of Don Quixote.

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Shepherds: REDIRECT Shepherd...

Pastoralist: Pastoralists are people whose main source of livelihood is livestock with which they move seasonally in search of fresh pasture and water....

Literature: :For other uses of Literature, see Literature (disambiguation)....

Pastoral related Images and Photos (experimental)

Pastoral	Pastoral Landscape VIII	A Pastoral Journey	Vermillion Pastoral I
Vermillion Pastoral II	Vermillion Pastoral III	Pastoral Scene with a Cowherd	Pastoral a la Cage 1742 (One of a pair)
Pastoral Scene Palatine Gallery Palazzo Pitti Florence	A Pastoral Group Portrait of a Lady and Three Children Seated on a Gilded Throne