Pastoral Geography and Utopistic Considerations in Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée

Abstract

That setting is important to most novels is self-evident, yet this is particularly true of pastoral literature. Pastoral, a popular mode of writing that underwent renewal in the Renaissance, relies on the setting of Arcadia. An idyllic golden age where shepherds contemplate love, Arcadia is intrinsic to the pastoral’s identity. However, the pastoral landscape is renewed and reconsidered in Honoré d’Urfé’s monumental Astrée (1607–27). The author relocates the pastoral setting from ancient Greece to fifth-century France and the region of Forez. Because this was a popular mode at the time, the change of setting drew the reader’s attention to the authorial choice. In the novel, the author distinguishes his work from tradition by relying upon geographic specificity and the motif of the voyage to establish a foundation myth for France. Moreover, the importance of setting raises questions of the nature of the landscape and considerations of the utopistic ramifications for the pastoral mode as d’Urfé conceives it.