Bucolic Poetry Research Articles

Philitas of Cos and the Origin of the Greek Bucolic Poetry

Philitas of Cos and the Origin of the Greek Bucolic Poetry

Faces of Loneliness in Propertius 1.18

In Propertius’ Elegy 1.18, the speaker arrives at an empty, desolate grove so that he may complain loud about being an abandoned lover in solitude. The work is positioned in the mainstream of the Augustan love elegy, but apart from elegiac concepts, it contains numerous topoi and intertextual references to the tradition of bucolic poetry. This article discusses the functioning of the motif of loneliness, which in 1.18 combines various elements that make up the image of the depicted world and enables the selection and modification of interpretative clues.

The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power

The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power

Rougier de la Bergerie’s Bucolic Poetry and the Nineteenth-Century French Discourse on Climate and Deforestation

ABSTRACT This essay examines the bucolic poetry of the French agronomist Jean-Baptiste Rougier de la Bergerie (1762–1836). It presents his views on the value of scientific poetry; situates his writing within the contemporary French discourse on deforestation and climate instability; and shows how his Églogues bucoliques clamoured for action to protect the nation’s woods and thereby regulate meteorological conditions across the land. In this regard Rougier criticised the ignorance and excessive influence of the French Academies in Paris and granted an important voice to rural experiences and perspectives. He therefore decentred traditional sites of authority and defended the value of a horizontal information network offering more empirical and local forms of knowledge.

Поэтика ночных пейзажей в ранних произведениях Н. В. Гоголя

<p>In the present article the nocturnal landscapes of some of the short stories from the <em>Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka</em> and <em>Viy</em> from the <em>Mirgorod</em> cycle, are reconsidered, thus analysis is focused on the depiction of the Evil and the author’s attitude to the metaphysical background of this problem. The scrutiny is prompted by a few groups of questions: 1. what sort of poetic principles regulate the depictions of Ukrainian landscapes and the relationship between man and the ’scenery including him’ in N. V. Gogol’s early works? 2. how do a great variety of elements taken from different traditions cross each other at one point, such as the Bucolic (pastoral) poetry, clichés of Romanticism, folkloric archetypes and the author’s own, independent artistic means? 3. what is hidden behind the apparent Dualism of the Good and the Evil in Gogol’s early works? how do elements of Romanticist <em>Weltanschauung</em> and the traits of Evangelic (<em>paskhal’naya</em>) Aesthetics co-exist? With these questions traced down, the function of the multifoldness of the Gogolian prose can get verified alongside with identifying a close relationship between text and subtext. According to the approach of the author of the present article, the research into the ‘literary appearance’ of Gogol’s early works may reveal the various stages in the development of the writer’s artistic idea.</p>

Epic Apostrophe from Homer to Nonnus

This contribution explores the use of apostrophe (address by the narrator to the heroic figures) in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca. Nonnus inherits the use of this device from his epic predecessors: the emotional force of apostrophe is present in Homer; apostrophe as a marker of intertextual engagement with other genres (such as hymns or bucolic poetry) can be found in Hellenistic poetry. Most of the apostrophes in Nonnus are found in book 25 of the Dionysiaca, a passage rife with explicit poetological discussion of the relation between the Nonnian narrator and Homer. Apostrophe can here be read as a dramatization of this intertextual dialog with his “father” Homer.

L’ἀδύνατον nelle Bucoliche virgiliane

Virgil often uses the ἀδύνατον in the Bucolics, reworking its features in comparison to Theocritus and the pastoral poetic tradition. In their several and various occurrences, the τόποι of the ἀδύνατον are changed and renewed in order to underline the novelty of Virgilian bucolic poetry and to highlight the psychology of the characters.

BRANDOS, SUAVES… E SATÍRICOS. BUCOLISMO E SÁTIRA EM DIOGO BERNARDES

Neste estudo parte-se da conceptualização que toma o satírico como modo literário, passível, portanto, de dominar um texto ou de nele se manifestar em interacção com outros modos, aceitando ou rejeitando as expectativas abertas pela tradição. Neste sentido, a subtileza expressiva com que se embrenha em textos de géneros pautados por convenções que não tornariam previsível a sua presença pode constituir um factor importante a determinar a sua eficácia. Particularizando, estuda-se a forma como se infiltra a sátira no lirismo e na obra bucólica de Diogo Bernardes, poeta quinhentista repetida e paradigmaticamente caracterizado pela brandura e suavidade dos seus versos. Tomando como contraponto as cartas, analisa-se nas éclogas de O Lima a exploração de convenções que permitem o tratamento satírico de algumas situações e acontecimentos do mundo empírico, e vê-se que os pastores de Diogo Bernardes se tornam observadores e críticos autorizados do mundo que abandonaram. No entanto, sendo certo que dirigem a sua sátira de forma bem mais directa e impetuosa do que o faz o próprio autor no seu epistolário, estes pastores não deixam de entoar os versos “brandos” e “suaves” característicos da poesia bucólica em geral, e da obra de Diogo Bernardes em particular.

Literature and Happiness

Literature and Happiness D. J. Moores Let your verse be the happy occurrence Somehow within the restless morning wind Which goes about smelling of mint and thyme . . . And all the rest is literature. —Paul Verlaine1 It's not lIterary unless it's depressing. Although this statement is unfounded, I often hear it from beginning students and nonacademics who believe that literature is always dark and dreary, and that literariness is tantamount to depictions of suffering, struggle, and tragedy. I typically respond to such comments in the usual English-professor way, pointing out that literature represents the full range of human experience, and that the subject matter is far less important than the way in which a writer describes it. What is more, I say to such people, sounding a bit like Polonius, there are numerous literary genres beyond the tragic, including comedy, romance, pastoral and bucolic poetry, absurdist drama, and utopian fiction, as well as countless aesthetic effects such as the grotesque, the sentimental, the sublime, the ecstatic, the satirical, the epiphanic, and many others that are by no means "dark and depressing." And yet, the question remains whether such a response is entirely accurate. Is there at least a measure of truth in the idea of a negativity bias in literary studies? [End Page 260] The source of such a misconception lies, in part, in the nature of narrative, which is itself conflict based and cannot be otherwise if it is to capture interest. According to long-standing ideas that persist around the globe in numerous cultures, narrative needs to be rooted in conflict and tension. To my knowledge, no artistically complex narrative exists that is not driven by a central conflict or set of interrelated tensions. A story about a wealthy, successful man who lives in pure, suburban felicity with his supermodel wife and two lovely children, each of whom is a high-achieving honor student, is just not interesting. As preferable as such happiness is for many heterosexual people, it is not compelling as a story. If I were to tell such a story to someone, framing it with, "let me tell you an interesting tale," my interlocutor would likely be disappointed after listening to me. But if I started my tale with a description of this family and then added a complicating element, such as the man's secret affair with his young, male assistant, who blackmails him and is then found dead with twenty kilos of cocaine in the trunk of an abandoned police cruiser, I suspect it would capture the interest of someone with an ear for a good tale. Insofar as narrative is concerned, then, stories must by their nature be thickened, or made interesting, by crises, hardships, losses, challenges, obstacles, etc. Aristotle's ancient idea about the necessity of complication, or forces locked in a productive tension that fuels the narrative forward, still holds. Perhaps I can be proven wrong on the point, but I am unaware of any narrative in any genre—even comedies or stories with happy endings—that does not also foreground obstructionist characters, tension, struggle with obstacles, hardship, or suffering. Such elements make the story a story, and without them there may be something interesting to tell, but what one tells in such a zero-conflict circumstance is definitely not narrative in the traditional, literary sense. If the principle (that narrative needs conflict to be deemed narrative) is true, however, does this mean that all narratives, in order to be deemed literary and thus worthy of serious, critical attention, need to end with the protagonist's suicide, tragic death, incarceration, or institutionalization for psychosis? This type of denouement may lend some measure of truth to the popular (mis)conception of literature as a dark and dreary form. After all, is there such a thing as happy literature? Do English departments ever offer courses in such a topic? Perhaps a few, like me, do teach the subject of happiness, but many professors of English, especially in graduate programs, would likely scoff at such a course as "Ecstatic Poetry" or the "Literature of Happiness." Have literary [End Page 261] scholars cultivated an unstated but ubiquitous preference for the...

Daphnis ego in silvis, hinc usque ad sidera notus: una lettura dell’ecl. 5 di Virgilio (e della 10)

In the two shepherds of ecl. 5, Mopsus and Menalcas, and in their songs Virgil compares his bucolic poetry to Theocritean tradition and affirms his own novelty in thecharacter of Daphnis and in Men...

Dendroepigraphy: Botanical Realities in a Bucolic Motif

The dendroepigraphy motif, in which characters carve texts into trees, can be read in light of botanical science as a hermeneutic tool for Latin bucolic poetry. Widespread interest in arboriculture among Roman elites, including agricultural treatises discussing tree and bark damage, suggests that readers and writers of bucolic were familiar enough with tree science to understand the botanical effects of carving long texts into trees. This approach reveals that the dendroepigraphy motif does more than signal the intrusion of elegy into the bucolic world, but also encourages ironic readings of inscribed texts or metaphorizes the poet's engagement with bucolic predecessors.

Dendroepigraphy: Botanical Realities in a Bucolic Motif

The dendroepigraphy motif, in which characters carve texts into trees, can be read in light of botanical science as a hermeneutic tool for Latin bucolic poetry. Widespread interest in arboriculture among Roman elites, including agricultural treatises discussing tree and bark damage, suggests that readers and writers of bucolic were familiar enough with tree science to understand the botanical effects of carving long texts into trees. This approach reveals that the dendroepigraphy motif does more than signal the intrusion of elegy into the bucolic world, but also encourages ironic readings of inscribed texts or metaphorizes the poet's engagement with bucolic predecessors.

Pásztori múzsa a nagyvárosban

The title of my paper refers to a remark of Charles Witke, who specifies Juvenal’s Satire 3 in his monograph of Latin Satire as the eclogue of the urban poor. The interlocutor (who is also the main speaker in this case) of the satire says farewell to a friend before leaving his home for good, just like Meliboeus in Vergil’s First Eclogue. Both dialogues take place in natural environment, so to say, in a locus amoenus, however the setting of the satire is somewhat different from the traditional bucolic scenes. In my paper, I present the aforementioned bucolic features of the beginning and closure of Satire 3, after a brief summary of the other Juvenalian Satires showing the influence of bucolic poetry.

The Date of the Bucolic Poet Martius Valerius

ABSTRACTThe collection of four Latin bucolics ascribed to one Martius Valerius was only published in the twentieth century; they have been widely considered as twelfth-century compositions. Picking up on suggestions proposed by François Dolbeau, this study presents evidence that Martius drew directly on the bucolics of Theocritus, and that his poems are late antique, not medieval, literary productions, probably written in the sixth century. Such a conclusion will require a revision of the history of post-Virgilian Latin bucolic poetry.

Dal chalcidicus versus al pastor siculus: Verg. Ecl. 10,50-51 e la «conversione bucolica» di Gallo

The complex verses of Verg. ecl. 10,50-51, studied many times with different results, can be read as a synthesis of the ideas and the proceedings developed in the whole eclogue, in the comparison between Vergilian bucolic poetry and Gallan elegy, but also in relation to the Theocritean pastoral tradition.

La Arcadia en la Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea de Góngora

Según la tesis del filólogo clásico alemán Bruno Snell, la Arcadia de la poesía antigua es un paisaje espiritual de carácter metapoético. Lo habitan los pastores enamorados, de manera que sus sentimientos, que Snell identificó con la "realidad del alma", toman carta de naturaleza en dicho espacio. Los fantasmas que surgen de estos afectos se convierten, entonces, en "figuras de la poesía". Góngora hizo suyas en la Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea las estructuras elementales de la bucólica, condensando sus extensas tramas en un epilio conceptista. Si los idilios al modo de Teócrito o Virgilio tratan de los enredos de las pasiones fruto del deseo, las resistencias y los conflictos, el salvajismo y la tensión entre el amor y el odio, Góngora sintetizó esta fenomenología erótica en la configuración arquetípica de la pareja amorosa y del tercero como intruso. Por eso, esta lectura de las octavas reales del cordobés no se dirige tanto a su contenido épico –ni siquiera al eglógico, porraro que suene– cuanto, más bien, al alcance de su rico armazón conceptual, que implica una reflexión elemental sobre la esencia de la poesía.

Bukolinio žanro transformacija Biono kūryboje

The article deals with the poetry of the Greek bucolic poet Bion (probably the end of the 2nd century B.C.). Nothing is known about poet’s life except that he was born at Phlossa near Smyrna. The lament Epitaphios Bionos composed by his disciple claims that Bion was poisened, but this story is probably only an invention. The longest and the best preserved of Bion’s poems is the lament Epitaphios Adonis. Seventeen fragments of his other pieces are preserved in Stobaeus, most of them are erotic in tone. Bion was the imitator of Theocritus. All three bucolic poets – Theocritus, Moschus and Bion – wrote in a poetic Doric dialect and used the same metre as well as the same common topics. The peculiar characteristics of Bion poetry and the inherited bucolic elements are discussed. Although his poems are included in the general class of bucolic poetry, the remains show little of the bucolic traces. Bion wrote erotic poetry totally unconnected with the countryside.

PASTORAL PARATEXTS: THE POLITICAL AND THE LYRICAL IN GARCILASO DE LA VEGA AND PIERRE DE RONSARD

This article considers the dedicatory prefaces that frame Ronsard’s and Garcilaso’s pastoral works as an articulation of these poets’ divergent political and lyrical visions of bucolic poetry. While there is often a tendency to overlook prefatory matter as somehow extraneous to the text, this article argues that Ronsard’s ‘A treshaut et tresvertueux Prince Francois de France, Duc d’Anjou, fils et frere de Roy’ and Garcilaso’s dedications in the ‘Egloga primera’ and ‘Egloga tercera’ are essential documents in understanding these poets’ use of pastoral.

Tragedijos pėdsakai Moscho kūryboje

The article deals with the role of Classical Greek tragedies in the Hellenistic period and their influence on the poetry of that period. The importance of Hellenistic drama was much less than that of Classical drama. Old tragedies were performed, studied and edited during all the Hellenistic period. The poets of that period are known as poetae docti, they had got a good knowledge of the poetry of the past centuries. One of the Hellenistic poets Moschus lived and wrote during the second century B. C. He was grammarian, a pupil of Alexandrian philologist Aristarchus. Like many others Hellenistic poets, Moschus wrote bucolic poetry, short epic poems and epigrams. His language is very closely Homeric. The analysis of the poets’ short epic poems Megara and especially his masterpiece Europe reveals that Moschus was derivative author and used many litterary sources, not only Homer and Hellenistic poetry (Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius), but an Attic tragedy as well. The traces of influence of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides on Moschus’ poetry are analysed (Aesch. Pers. 181–187; Soph. frg. 881; Eur. frg. 820 etc.).

His ego cantabo silvis? Ecloga come portavoce del discorso del potere

The paper deals with the strategies of using the proper names, intertextuality and allegory in the genre of neolatin bucolic poetry with special regards to Boccaccio’s eclogue Faunus. The study examines the possibilities of using the ancient code as an intertextual necromancy, the position of ego and identity in the poem, the tension between acustic and visual elements. The meaning or association-basis of the given name (mask) has special effect on the enrichment of the poetical imaginary, while the name also influences the context and the global allegorical level of the poem. The poet often uses pseudoetimological, mitological or historical approaches in the levelling of the poem, which is the part of his selfcanonisation strategies, while the genre of eclogue seems to be the mouthpiece of power.