Eclogues (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)

At a glance:

Vergil’s ten eclogues made their young author a nationally renowned figure when they were first made public approximately 39 b.c.e. Although these poems do not reach the heights of the Georgics (36-29 b.c.e.) or the Aeneid (30-19 b.c.e.), they are the work of a master, not the hesitant stumblings of an apprentice writer. Vergil made the pastoral form, first popularized by Theocritus, his own and paved the way for many English poets who imitated him, among them Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Matthew Arnold.

Vergil’s pastoral...

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