Eclogue
Encyclopedia
An eclogue is a poem in a classical
style on a pastoral
subject. Poems in the genre
are sometimes also called bucolics
.
The form of the word in contemporary English is taken from French
eclogue, from Old French
, from Latin ecloga. However it is also attested in Middle English
as eclog, and this form was apparently taken directly from Latin ecloga, which itself came into Latin from the Greek
eklogē , meaning "choice, military draft, political election, harvest, reckoning of accounts, literary product". The term was applied metaphorically to short writings in any genre, including parts of a poetic sequence
or poetry book. The ancients referred to individual pieces in Virgil
's Bucolica as eclogae, and the term was used by later Latin poets to refer to their own pastoral
poetry, often in imitation of Virgil. The combination of Virgil's influence and the persistence of pastoral
poetry through the Renaissance imposed "eclogues" as the accepted term for the genre. Later Roman poets who wrote eclogues include Calpurnius and Nemesianus.
published his Eclogae Piscatoriae, replacing the traditional Virgilian shepherds with fishermen from the Bay of Naples. He was imitated by the English poet Phineas Fletcher
in his Piscatorie Eclogs (1633). Another English poet, William Diaper
, produced Nereides: or Sea-Eclogues in 1712. The speakers are sea-gods and sea-nymphs. By the early eighteenth century, the whole pastoral
genre
was ripe for parody. John Gay
ridiculed the eclogues of Ambrose Philips
in his Shepherd's Week and Mary Wortley Montagu wrote six "Town Eclogues", substituting the fashionable society of contemporary London for Virgil's rural Arcadia.
eclogues were written by Alexander Barclay
, in 1514. In English literature
, Edmund Spenser
's The Shepheardes Calendar (1579) also belongs to the genre (twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year). Alexander Pope
produced a series of four eclogues (one for each season of the year) in imitation of Virgil in 1709. The Spanish
poet Garcilaso de la Vega
also wrote eclogues in the Virgilian style. In French
, Pierre de Ronsard
wrote a series of eclogues under the title Les Bucoliques, and Clément Marot
also wrote in the genre. In the seventeenth century, collections of eclogues were published by the Polish poets Szymon Szymonowic
and Józef Bartłomiej Zimorowic. Miklós Radnóti
, the Hungarian
Jewish poet, wrote eclogues about the Holocaust. Seamus Heaney
's collection Electric Light (2001) includes a "Bann Valley Eclogue", a "Glanmore Eclogue", and an English version of Virgil's ninth eclogue. The Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi
wrote both a poetic treatise on Garcilaso de la Vega's Eclogues, as well as a book of poems in homage to the Spanish master, entitled "Empire of Dreams". The most prolific modern poet writing eclogues was Louis MacNeice
. His eclogues included "Eclogue by a five barred gate", "Eclogue for the motherless", "An eclogue for Christmas", and "Eclogue from Iceland". Derek Walcott
in The Bounty included Italian Eclogues (for Joseph Brodsky
). Brodsky's translator, Melissa Green, has written The Squanicook Eclogues.
. Jan Václav Voříšek
, César Franck
, Franz Liszt
(in the first book of Années de Pèlerinage
), Antonín Dvořák
, Gerald Finzi
, Vítězslav Novák
, and Egon Wellesz
are among other composers who used the title in their work. Igor Stravinsky
titled the second and third movements of his Duo Concertant (1932) "Eclogue I" and "Eclogue II". The middle movement of his three-movement Ode (1943) is also titled "Eclogue".
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
style on a pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
subject. Poems in the genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
are sometimes also called bucolics
Bucolics
The Eclogues is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil.Taking as his generic model the Greek Bucolica by Theocritus, Virgil created a Roman version partly by offering a dramatic and mythic interpretation of revolutionary change at Rome...
.
The form of the word in contemporary English is taken from French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
eclogue, from Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
, from Latin ecloga. However it is also attested in Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
as eclog, and this form was apparently taken directly from Latin ecloga, which itself came into Latin from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
eklogē , meaning "choice, military draft, political election, harvest, reckoning of accounts, literary product". The term was applied metaphorically to short writings in any genre, including parts of a poetic sequence
Sequence
In mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...
or poetry book. The ancients referred to individual pieces in Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Bucolica as eclogae, and the term was used by later Latin poets to refer to their own pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
poetry, often in imitation of Virgil. The combination of Virgil's influence and the persistence of pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
poetry through the Renaissance imposed "eclogues" as the accepted term for the genre. Later Roman poets who wrote eclogues include Calpurnius and Nemesianus.
Variations on a theme
In 1526 the Italian Renaissance poet Jacopo SannazaroJacopo Sannazaro
Jacopo Sannazaro was an Italian poet, humanist and epigrammist from Naples.He wrote easily in Latin, in Italian and in Neapolitan, but is best remembered for his humanist classic Arcadia, a masterwork that illustrated the possibilities of poetical prose in Italian, and instituted the theme of...
published his Eclogae Piscatoriae, replacing the traditional Virgilian shepherds with fishermen from the Bay of Naples. He was imitated by the English poet Phineas Fletcher
Phineas Fletcher
Phineas Fletcher was an English poet, elder son of Dr Giles Fletcher, and brother of Giles the younger. He was born at Cranbrook, Kent, and was baptized on 8 April 1582.-Life:...
in his Piscatorie Eclogs (1633). Another English poet, William Diaper
William Diaper
William Diaper was an English poet of the Augustan era. Little is known about his life. He was born in Bridgwater, Somerset and attended Balliol College, Oxford as a pauper, where he took his BA in 1702...
, produced Nereides: or Sea-Eclogues in 1712. The speakers are sea-gods and sea-nymphs. By the early eighteenth century, the whole pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
was ripe for parody. John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
ridiculed the eclogues of Ambrose Philips
Ambrose Philips
-Life:He was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699. He seems to have lived chiefly at Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in...
in his Shepherd's Week and Mary Wortley Montagu wrote six "Town Eclogues", substituting the fashionable society of contemporary London for Virgil's rural Arcadia.
Modern eclogues
The first English languageEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
eclogues were written by Alexander Barclay
Alexander Barclay
Dr Alexander Barclay was an English/Scottish poet.-Biography:Barclay was born in about 1476. His place of birth is matter of dispute, but William Bulleyn, who was a native of Ely, and probably knew him when he was in the monastery there, asserts that he was born "beyonde the cold river of Twede"...
, in 1514. In English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
's The Shepheardes Calendar (1579) also belongs to the genre (twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year). Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
produced a series of four eclogues (one for each season of the year) in imitation of Virgil in 1709. The Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
poet Garcilaso de la Vega
Garcilaso de la Vega
Garcilaso de la Vega was a Spanish soldier and poet. He was the most influential poet to introduce Italian Renaissance verse forms, poetic techniques and themes to Spain.-Biography:...
also wrote eclogues in the Virgilian style. In French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...
wrote a series of eclogues under the title Les Bucoliques, and Clément Marot
Clément Marot
Clément Marot was a French poet of the Renaissance period.-Youth:Marot was born at Cahors, the capital of the province of Quercy, some time during the winter of 1496-1497. His father, Jean Marot , whose more correct name appears to have been des Mares, Marais or Marets, was a Norman from the Caen...
also wrote in the genre. In the seventeenth century, collections of eclogues were published by the Polish poets Szymon Szymonowic
Szymon Szymonowic
Szymon Szymonowic was a Polish Renaissance poet. He was known as "the Polish Pindar."-Life:Szymonowic studied in Poland , France and Belgium...
and Józef Bartłomiej Zimorowic. Miklós Radnóti
Miklós Radnóti
Miklós Radnóti, birth name Miklós Glatter was a Hungarian poet who died in The Holocaust.-Personality and early life:...
, the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
Jewish poet, wrote eclogues about the Holocaust. Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
's collection Electric Light (2001) includes a "Bann Valley Eclogue", a "Glanmore Eclogue", and an English version of Virgil's ninth eclogue. The Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
wrote both a poetic treatise on Garcilaso de la Vega's Eclogues, as well as a book of poems in homage to the Spanish master, entitled "Empire of Dreams". The most prolific modern poet writing eclogues was Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
. His eclogues included "Eclogue by a five barred gate", "Eclogue for the motherless", "An eclogue for Christmas", and "Eclogue from Iceland". Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
in The Bounty included Italian Eclogues (for Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...
). Brodsky's translator, Melissa Green, has written The Squanicook Eclogues.
In music
The term also been applied to pastoral music, with the first significant examples being piano works by the Czech composer Václav TomášekVáclav Tomášek
Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek, was a Czech composer and music teacher.-Life:As a pianist, he was an autodidact, becoming one of the most important piano teachers of Prague for a century. Until 1824 he worked as a piano teacher in aristocratic families...
. Jan Václav Voříšek
Jan Václav Voríšek
Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek , was a Czech composer of classical music, pianist, and organist.-Life:...
, César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
, Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
(in the first book of Années de Pèlerinage
Années de Pèlerinage
Années de pèlerinage is a set of three suites by Franz Liszt for solo piano. Liszt's complete musical style is evident in this masterwork, which ranges from virtuosic fireworks to sincerely moving emotional statements. His musical maturity can be seen evolving through his experience and travel...
), Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
, Gerald Finzi
Gerald Finzi
Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a song-writer, but also wrote in other genres...
, Vítězslav Novák
Vítezslav Novák
Vítězslav Novák was one of the most well-respected Czech composers and pedagogues, almost singlehandedly founding a mid-century Czech school of composition...
, and Egon Wellesz
Egon Wellesz
Egon Joseph Wellesz was an Austrian-born British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.- Life :...
are among other composers who used the title in their work. Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
titled the second and third movements of his Duo Concertant (1932) "Eclogue I" and "Eclogue II". The middle movement of his three-movement Ode (1943) is also titled "Eclogue".