Pastoral Process draws a basic distinction between two aspects of the pastoral ideal: the Arcadian pastoral, which locates the unspoiled paradise in space, apart from the complexities of city and court, and finds it accessible for limited periods of recuperation and reorientation; and the Golden Age mode, which locates the ideal pastoral life in time gone by, always already lost as soon as it is apprehended as paradise. The author's central aim is an archaeology of the nostalgia-based pastoral of the vanished Golden Age. On the surface level, her close readings of certain Renaissance...