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pastoral

(Encyclopedia)pastoral, literary work in which the shepherd's life is presented in a conventionalized manner. In this convention the purity and simplicity of shepherd life is contrasted with the corruption and arti...

Pastoral Epistles

(Encyclopedia)Pastoral Epistles: name for the New Testament letters of Timothy and Titus. ...

bucolics

(Encyclopedia)bucolics: see pastoral.

idyl

(Encyclopedia)idyl īˈdəl [key], short poem. The ancient idyls, especially those of Bion and Moschus, were intended as little selections in the style of such longer poems as elegies or epics. There are 10 famous ...

elegy

(Encyclopedia)elegy, in Greek and Roman poetry, a poem written in elegiac verse (i.e., couplets consisting of a hexameter line followed by a pentameter line). The form dates back to 7th cent. b.c. in Greece and poe...

Theocritus

(Encyclopedia)Theocritus thēŏkˈrĭtəs [key], fl. c.270 b.c., Hellenistic Greek poet, b. Syracuse. The history of the pastoral begins with him, and in him the form seems to have reached its height. His poetic st...

epithalamium

(Encyclopedia)epithalamium ĕpˌĭthəlāˈmēəm [key], song or poem written to celebrate a marriage. An elaborate form of pastoral, the epithalamium usually tells of the happenings of the wedding day. Nymphs, she...

Urfé, Honoré d'

(Encyclopedia)Urfé, Honoré d' ōnōrāˈ dürfāˈ [key], 1567–1625, French novelist. He was the author of L'Astrée (5 vol., 1607–10), the principal French pastoral novel. It portrays shepherds and shepherde...

Darley, George

(Encyclopedia)Darley, George, 1795–1846, English author and mathematician, b. Ireland. Included among his works are the pastoral drama Sylvia (1827), the poem Nepenthe (1835), a precursor of 20th-century symbolis...

Chagai

(Encyclopedia)Chagai chäˈgī [key], town, W Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan, on the trade route to Afghanistan and Iran. Pastoral Baluchi and Brahui inhabit the region, which is noted for its Oriental ...