Lycidas and the Theory of Pastoral Poetry

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss various theories of the pastoral as they have evolved and been described in the critical works of their time and to relate Lycidas to those theories. Even though this is not an exhaustive study, examples of commentaries will be discussed from the Roman period, the early Italian Renaissance, the late Italian Renaissance, and the Elizabethan period: Maurus Servius Honoratus, Scholia Bernensia, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Badius Ascensius, Marco Girolamo Vida, Antonio Sebastiano Minturno, Giason Denores, Giovanni Battista Guarini, Giulio Cesare Scalige, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Webbe, and George Puttenham. Then, Lycidas will be related to the theories of the pastoral that have been presented. With more theoretical information, more accurate analyses of the artistic pieces related to the theory can be made, and thus the tradition can be elaborated more fully.