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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] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%