Pastoral Literature

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss pastoral literature.Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. An entreaty from Christopher Marlowe’s Passionate Shepherd to His Love - thought by many to be the crowning example of Elizabethan pastoral poetry. The traditions of pastoral poetry, literature and drama can be traced back to the third century BC and have principally offered a conventionalised picture of rural life, the naturalness and innocence of which is seen to contrast favourably with the corruption and artificialities of city and court life. Pastoral literature deals with tensions between nature and art, the real and the ideal, the actual and the mythical, and although pastoral works have been written from the point of view of shepherds or rustics, they have often been penned by highly sophisticated, urban poets and playwrights. But to what extent does pastoral literature represent a continuous yearning for a non-existent Golden Age of Innocence? How far did it evolve to reflect the social and political preoccupations of its times and what were the real meanings of its much used metaphors of town and country? With Helen Cooper, Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge; Laurence Lerner, former Professor of English at the University of Sussex; Julie Sanders, Professor of English Literature and Drama at the University of Nottingham.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Helen Cooper 3 episodes
  Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge
• Laurence Lerner No other episodes
  former Professor of English at the University of Sussex
• Julie Sanders 5 episodes
  Professor of English Literature and Drama at the University of Nottingham

Related episodes

• Piers Plowman
  
  29 Oct, 2020 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Metaphysical Poets
  
  3 Jul, 2008 820 English and Old English literatures
• Thomas Hardy’s Poetry
  
  13 Jan, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• Lyrical Ballads
  
  8 Mar, 2012 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Prelude
  
  22 Nov, 2007 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Later Romantics
  
  15 Apr, 2004 820 English and Old English literatures
• Literature
  
  5 Jan, 2012 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Chaucer
  
  9 Feb, 2006 820 English and Old English literatures
• John Clare
  
  7 May, 2020 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Epic
  
  6 Feb, 2003 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Greek and Roman Love Poetry
  
  26 Apr, 2007 880 Classical and modern Greek literatures
• Catullus
  
  9 Jan, 2020 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• History of Metaphor
  
  25 Nov, 2010 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Nature
  
  10 Jul, 2003 100 Philosophy
• Fairies
  
  11 May, 2006 390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
• The Romantics
  
  12 Oct, 2000 820 English and Old English literatures
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  
  18 Apr, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• William Morris
  
  5 Jul, 2018 700 Arts
• Robert Burns
  
  24 Oct, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Writing and Political Oppression
  
  8 Apr, 1999 320 Political science

---

Programme ID: p003c1cs

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003c1cs

Auto-category: 821.309 (English poetry–Early modern, 1500-1700)