Abstract
Convention and conventional are words that everyone uses with confidence, and it is hard to imagine any uncertainty about what they mean when one is speaking of pastoral poetry-a kind notoriously conscious of rules, precedents, and usages. But the terms are more elusive than their frequent and confident deployment suggests. This essay attempts to define what we mean, or should mean, by calling a pastoral poem conventional. My starting point is the uncertainty, among Marvell's best critics, about whether Damon the Mower is conventional. The poem, in Donald Friedman's words, purports to be an example of the pastoral love-complaint, but from the opening lines one can see something more complex is going on:
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