Enjoyed this—the pastoral genre doesn’t ever seem to finally exhaust itself. The excerpts from the two contemporary examples were somewhat underwhelming, though—the “boss” usage has a novel appeal for sure but it’s hard to imagine it not getting tedious across a whole book. The Theocritean spirit shows up in all kinds of surprising places, such as Mary Ruefle’s short prose piece “They Were Wrong”
Virgil originally called his Ecologues Bucolia, “cowherd songs” after Theocritus but in the sense of the pastoral. The Georgics in contrast were about farming (“a life that knows no fraud”) and bees and their city state (“When they swarm it is advisable to attract them with scents and the clashing of cymbals”). The last lines of book IV of the Georgics (my old Faber edition) do note, “I, Virgil, in those days was more concerned with the songs of shepherds.”
Fascinating (and not only because of my obvious biases as a person in the country.) I had many thoughts but the only notable ones are 1. I want to read both of these books now and 2. Many, many people around here regularly call God "Boss" or "The Bossman."
Enjoyed this—the pastoral genre doesn’t ever seem to finally exhaust itself. The excerpts from the two contemporary examples were somewhat underwhelming, though—the “boss” usage has a novel appeal for sure but it’s hard to imagine it not getting tedious across a whole book. The Theocritean spirit shows up in all kinds of surprising places, such as Mary Ruefle’s short prose piece “They Were Wrong”
https://hyperiondays.substack.com/p/on-gardens-or-the-life-in-mary-ruefles?r=2fj4o4&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Virgil originally called his Ecologues Bucolia, “cowherd songs” after Theocritus but in the sense of the pastoral. The Georgics in contrast were about farming (“a life that knows no fraud”) and bees and their city state (“When they swarm it is advisable to attract them with scents and the clashing of cymbals”). The last lines of book IV of the Georgics (my old Faber edition) do note, “I, Virgil, in those days was more concerned with the songs of shepherds.”
Fascinating (and not only because of my obvious biases as a person in the country.) I had many thoughts but the only notable ones are 1. I want to read both of these books now and 2. Many, many people around here regularly call God "Boss" or "The Bossman."
Really? Where is around here?
Rural NW Ohio. And really.