Georgic and Pastoral
This chapter addresses the laws of genre in the seventeenth century. The idea of laws of genre, at least in their modern form, was imported into literary theory from linguistics. At a time when literary conventions were thought of as supplementary language rules, genres understandably came to be regarded as coding systems. The genres need to be restored to their settings in history and literary tradition, and to see them once more as diachronic existences. Among the strongest claims for the status of law is surely the arrangement of genres in pairs: epigram and lyric; pastoral and georgic; novel and romance. The chapter then looks at the connection between seventeenth-century pastoral and georgic. Pastoral is spoken dramatically by shepherds, and in consequence must use simple diction that avoids any hint of precise knowledge: a language of feeling incapable of particularization or detailed description. Georgic, on the contrary, is spoken in the poet’s own voice, and far from avoiding knowledgeability seeks to inculcate it through didacticism, albeit didacticism concealed by implicitness and sweetened by delightful details.