One of the enduring traditions of Western literary history, pastoral is often mischaracterized as a catchall for literature about rural themes and nature in general. In "What Is Pastoral?," distinguished literary historian Paul Alpers argues that pastoral is based upon a fundamental fiction that the lives of shepherds or other socially humble figures represent the lives of human beings in general.
Ranging from Virgil's "Eclogues" to Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Country of the Pointed Firs," from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Hardy and Frost, this work brings the story of the pastoral...