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The form of the word "eclogue" in contemporary English is taken from French eclogue, from Old French, from Latin ecloga.[citation needed] However it is also attested in Middle English as eclog, and this form was apparently taken directly from Latin ecloga, which itself came into Latin from the Greek eklogē (ἐκλογή), meaning "choice, military draft, political election, harvest, reckoning of accounts, literary product". The term was applied metaphorically to short writings in any genre, including parts of a poetic sequence or poetry book. The ancients referred to individual pieces in Virgil's Bucolica[1] as eclogae, and the term was used by later Latin poets to refer to their own pastoral poetry, often in imitation of Virgil. The combination of Virgil's influence and the persistence of pastoral poetry through the Renaissance imposed "eclogues" as the accepted term for the genre. Later Roman poets who wrote eclogues include Calpurnius and Nemesianus.

Variations on a theme[edit]

In 1526, the Italian Renaissance poet Jacopo Sannazaro published his Eclogae Piscatoriae, replacing the traditional Virgilian shepherds with fishermen from the Bay of Naples.[citation needed] He was imitated by the English poet Phineas Fletcher in his Piscatorie Eclogs (1633). Another English poet, William Diaper, produced Nereides: or Sea-Eclogues in 1712. The speakers are sea-gods and sea-nymphs. By the early 18th century, the whole pastoral genre was ripe for parody. John Gay ridiculed the eclogues of Ambrose Philips in his Shepherd's Week and Mary Wortley Montagu wrote six "Town Eclogues", substituting the fashionable society of contemporary London for Virgil's rural Arcadia.

Modern eclogues[edit]

The first English language eclogues were written by Alexander Barclay, in 1514.[citation needed] In English literature, Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calendar (1579) also belongs to the genre (twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year). Alexander Pope produced a series of four eclogues (one for each season of the year) in imitation of Virgil in 1709. The Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega also wrote eclogues in the Virgilian style. In French, Pierre de Ronsard wrote a series of eclogues under the title Les Bucoliques, and Clément Marot also wrote in the genre. In the seventeenth century, collections of eclogues were published by the Polish poets Szymon Szymonowic and Józef Bartłomiej Zimorowic. W. H. Auden called his book-length "The Age of Anxiety"(1944-1946) a "Baroque Eclogue". Miklós Radnóti, the Hungarian Jewish poet, wrote eclogues about the Holocaust. Seamus Heaney's collection Electric Light (2001) includes a "Bann Valley Eclogue", a "Glanmore Eclogue", and an English version of Virgil's ninth eclogue. The Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi wrote both a poetic treatise on Garcilaso de la Vega's Eclogues, as well as a book of poems in homage to the Spanish master, entitled "Empire of Dreams". The most prolific modern poet writing eclogues was Louis MacNeice. His eclogues included "Eclogue by a five barred gate", "Eclogue for the motherless", "An eclogue for Christmas", and "Eclogue from Iceland". Lisa Robertson wrote a book of poems called XEclogue. Derek Walcott in The Bounty included Italian Eclogues (for Joseph Brodsky). Brodsky's translator, Melissa Green, has written The Squanicook Eclogues.

In music[edit]

The term also been applied to pastoral music, with the first significant examples being piano works by the Czech composer Václav Tomášek.[citation needed] Jan Václav Voříšek, César Franck, Franz Liszt (in the first book of Années de Pèlerinage), Antonín Dvořák, Vítězslav Novák, and Egon Wellesz are among other composers who used the title in their work. Claude Debussy based his "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" on a famous eclogue by Stéphane Mallarmé. Igor Stravinsky titled the second and third movements of his Duo Concertant (1932) "Eclogue I" and "Eclogue II". The middle movement of his three-movement Ode (1943) is also titled "Eclogue". A work that is believed to be an unfinished piano concerto by Gerald Finzi was posthumously titled "Eclogue" by the publisher. A more recent composition with the title 'Eclogue' is a work by Maurice Blower for horn and strings, dating from the 1950s. CD label Cameo Classics recorded it in 2011, after the score had been discovered by the late composer's son, Thomas.


  1. ^ Van Sickle, John B (2005). The Design of Virgil's Bucolics. Duckworth. ISBN 1-85399-676-9. 

Further reading[edit]