Landscape into Myth: Theocritus' Bucolic Poetry

Abstract

‘I no longer look upon Theocritus as a romantic writer,’ wrote Lady Montagu to Alexander Pope; ‘he has only given a plain image of the way of life amongst the peasants of his country … I don't doubt, had he been born a Briton, but his Idylliums had been filled with descriptions of thrashing and churning.’ Thanks to greater sophistication about the nature of pastoral and a better knowledge of Hellenistic poetry we have probably left behind forever the notion of Theocritus as the conveyor of a ‘plain image’ of rustic life. The alternative is not, of course, the ‘romantic’ Theocritus, but a poet of consummate literary artistry, wit, and irony.Besides the critical commonplace of rustic realism the other stumbling block to a satisfactory appreciation of Theocritus has been the inevitable comparison with Virgil. Critics who have viewed Theocritus through lenses adjusted to Virgil have tended to emphasize the emotional complexity, inwardness, and seriousness of the Latin poet over against the outward-facing playfulness and lightness of the Greek. Theocritus certainly lacks the tension between historical reality and poetry which gives the Eclogues their special depth and poignancy; but he has a seriousness of a different sort. The simplicity and trivial realism which are sometimes attributed to the bucolic Idylls are in fact themselves part of the poetic fiction and often stand in deliberate self-contradiction with mythical elements in the form and structure of the work.