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Pastoral

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Its name derived from Latin "pastor", shepherd, the pastoral is "a deliberately conventional poem expressing an urban poet's nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting."

Examples from the Renaissance include Edmund Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar (1579) and Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1581-84).



M. H. Abrams: A Glossary of Literary Terms. Seventh Edition. New York et al.: Harcourt Brace, 1999. 202.