Is pastoral a convention because it has always been one? I think I
prefer the orthodox view that the convention as such petered out
after Milton and sunk during the 18C. By the romantic period genre
becomes problematic and unstable, and that's where the pastoral
reemerges (on the back of the locodescriptive) as a mode, and this
time crucially interlocked with naturalism - which is where it's been
ever since, I would say. But a mode is not a convention, and is open
to interesting recombinations or reversions - or procombinations. It
partly migrated out of poetry (and fiction) altogether into natural
history writing from White onwards.
Ric has raised some interesting points. The phenomenology and the
language - and also I would hazard something like "incess" (ie
opposite to excess) as what is surpassed again and again but remains
active as a sort of recursion or recalling from within the very
speculative fabric that has covered over and surpassed.
Peter
Peter Larkin
Philosophy & Literature Librarian
University of Warwick Library
Coventry CV4 7AL UK
Tel: 01203 528151 Fax: 01203 524211
Email: [log in to unmask]
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