Pastoral romance

Francois Boucher . Autumn pastoral . 1749. An example of the perception of the pastoral tradition in Rococo art

Pastoral novel - a genre of European literature of the XV-XVII centuries.

Within the framework of the Renaissance and Baroque literature, antique influences are being revived, including the influence of the Greek love story and pastoralism . In conjunction with the chivalrous tradition, they spawn a pastoral novel (“Arcadia” by Jacopo Sannadzaro , “Diana” by Jorge Montemayor , “Galatea” by Cervantes , “ Arcadia ” by Philip Sidney , “ Astrea ” d'Urfe ). The blow of this tradition was dealt by the parody of Charles Sorel "Extravagant Shepherd".

The pastoral novel is not an organic link in the evolutionary process leading from the epic to the novel of the new time, but a secondary form, partly ideologically connected with renaissance utopianism . In the pastoral novel, the background to life of the hero, which, albeit in a fantastically transformed form, was present in the knightly novel, was actually removed. The conditional idyllic background of the pastoral novel is internally empty, except for a symbolic association with nature and "naturalness." The main subject of the novel - “private life” - appears in a pastoral novel in complete isolation from all “epicism”, in an absolutely artificial and conditional context, love relationships turn out to be the only kind of relationship and manifestations of the personality. Love collisions and the inner experiences generated by them unfold as if in a vacuumless space and are subject only to their own inner logic. Their rather elementary " psychologism " is in relation to complementarity with the late romance of chivalry, in which the elements of external adventure prevail.

The last and greatest pastoral novel that emerged in France at the junction of the Renaissance and Baroque (partly classicism ) is precisely “ Astrea ” d'Urfe, which had a great influence on the development of the XVII and even XVIII century, and not only his “aristocratic »Branches. D'Urfe’s platonic love concept inherits the classic courtly conceptions of the medieval novel. True, love Platonism is in a certain sense illusory and disguises the sensual beginning. The background is the Lignon plain of the ancient Gaul epoch, and the natural background thus merges with the pseudo-historical one. The last moment made it easier for Astrea to influence the subsequent gallant romance .