And Over the Mound Add a Verse
This set of readings--Theocritus Idyll I, Bion Lament for Adonis, Virgil Eclogues V & X, Spenser The Doleful Lay of Clorinda, and Moschus Lament for Bion--offers us a wealth of possibility for literary and historical criticism, aesthetic appeal, and various means of interpretive engagement. Despite these numerous approaches readers could take, however, one connective theme is overt and dominant: that of the natural world. As these works are gathered and arranged under the genre termed "pastoral," the natural world and the speaker's relationship to it are emphasized in and through our readings of them, thereby becoming the overt and dominant connective theme(s).
As I look over this last sentence, I realize that my thoughts stand in need of some clarity. When I use the term pastoral, I have in mind the definition offered by some editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature: pastorals, for these scholars, "project a cultivated poet's nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting" ("Poetic Forms" 2851). Though this seems fairly straightforward, the process of how certain texts become grouped under particular genres to the exclusion of others has been of great interest to me of late, for our perceptions of what a text "is," to what tradition a poet is supposed to belong to (or to have created, directly referring to Theocritus) directly affects how we read and understand not only that text but the historical context from which it sprang and its influences on subsequent generations. In short, are these texts deemed pastoral because they deal with the natural world, or do their concerns with the natural world cause them to be known as pastoral? Upon first glance, it may seem like I am simply asking the same (irrelevent) question twice, but I find a distinction here that I hope gets at (and perhaps denaturalizes) the process and politics of 1)anthology compilation, 2)genre creation, 3)arbitrary divisions made in time and literature, and 4)our places and powers as readers.
But it's late and I digress.
If compelled, I'd have to say that the most fascinating aspect of the works is the presence of the pathetic fallacy. Upon beginning the reading, I was expecting to roll my eyes at (now) trite and overused descriptions of happy...I don't know...flowers or fat bumblebees blushing with a shepherd's first thrill of love, or some such thing. Instead, I found complex and just a little bit frightening conceptions of what it means to, as Daphnis did, name and define one's subjectivity in terms of one's interactions with earth and water: "I am Daphnis, the one who herded his cows here, / And who watered here his bulls and calves" (5).
To anticipate bird tears and receive images of stags tearing into dog flesh was shocking. The thought that nature's way of expressing grief over the impending death of Daphnis is to act unnatural--to "run contrary" (6)--is paradoxical in a way that I feel unequipped to fully understand. What I do notice, however, is that the natural world is certainly not conceived of in Idyll I as peaceful (and by this I mean non-violent). Its usual course involves the death of the stag; its monstrous turn is not towards death and violence in and of themselves, but to a perverse reversal of roles.
The Doleful Lay of Clorinda also reveals a rather ambiguous--even malignant--pastoral world. The speaker confesses her griefs to the empty, echoing woods in the hopes of finding relief in the pouring forth of emotion. Instead, her "plaints" are returned to her, "to pay their usuary with a doubled paines" (699). Though it can be argued that here, the natural world is simply spiritually inanimate, there is something haunted, even malevolent in its emptiness. It is a hell filled with dead life, a place where pain is returned and magnified in the presence of mute and apathetic witnesses. This scene finds an echo of its own in Virgil's Eclogue V, in which the "hazels and rivers" (1) are directly named as witnesses (granted, if more empathetic ones) of death. Though "gods and stars" are found to be unpitying, the name of witness can connote a kind of active inaction.
It's a complicated term and one I hope to discuss in later segments.
Works Cited
"Poetic Forms and Literary Terminology." Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2001.
As I look over this last sentence, I realize that my thoughts stand in need of some clarity. When I use the term pastoral, I have in mind the definition offered by some editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature: pastorals, for these scholars, "project a cultivated poet's nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting" ("Poetic Forms" 2851). Though this seems fairly straightforward, the process of how certain texts become grouped under particular genres to the exclusion of others has been of great interest to me of late, for our perceptions of what a text "is," to what tradition a poet is supposed to belong to (or to have created, directly referring to Theocritus) directly affects how we read and understand not only that text but the historical context from which it sprang and its influences on subsequent generations. In short, are these texts deemed pastoral because they deal with the natural world, or do their concerns with the natural world cause them to be known as pastoral? Upon first glance, it may seem like I am simply asking the same (irrelevent) question twice, but I find a distinction here that I hope gets at (and perhaps denaturalizes) the process and politics of 1)anthology compilation, 2)genre creation, 3)arbitrary divisions made in time and literature, and 4)our places and powers as readers.
But it's late and I digress.
If compelled, I'd have to say that the most fascinating aspect of the works is the presence of the pathetic fallacy. Upon beginning the reading, I was expecting to roll my eyes at (now) trite and overused descriptions of happy...I don't know...flowers or fat bumblebees blushing with a shepherd's first thrill of love, or some such thing. Instead, I found complex and just a little bit frightening conceptions of what it means to, as Daphnis did, name and define one's subjectivity in terms of one's interactions with earth and water: "I am Daphnis, the one who herded his cows here, / And who watered here his bulls and calves" (5).
To anticipate bird tears and receive images of stags tearing into dog flesh was shocking. The thought that nature's way of expressing grief over the impending death of Daphnis is to act unnatural--to "run contrary" (6)--is paradoxical in a way that I feel unequipped to fully understand. What I do notice, however, is that the natural world is certainly not conceived of in Idyll I as peaceful (and by this I mean non-violent). Its usual course involves the death of the stag; its monstrous turn is not towards death and violence in and of themselves, but to a perverse reversal of roles.
The Doleful Lay of Clorinda also reveals a rather ambiguous--even malignant--pastoral world. The speaker confesses her griefs to the empty, echoing woods in the hopes of finding relief in the pouring forth of emotion. Instead, her "plaints" are returned to her, "to pay their usuary with a doubled paines" (699). Though it can be argued that here, the natural world is simply spiritually inanimate, there is something haunted, even malevolent in its emptiness. It is a hell filled with dead life, a place where pain is returned and magnified in the presence of mute and apathetic witnesses. This scene finds an echo of its own in Virgil's Eclogue V, in which the "hazels and rivers" (1) are directly named as witnesses (granted, if more empathetic ones) of death. Though "gods and stars" are found to be unpitying, the name of witness can connote a kind of active inaction.
It's a complicated term and one I hope to discuss in later segments.
Works Cited
"Poetic Forms and Literary Terminology." Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2001.
posted by alh at 10:50 PM
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