Pastoral: History and Key Facts

The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre. A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale.

The genre is also known as bucolic, from the Greek βουκολικόν, from βουκόλος, meaning a cowherd. Arcadia is the traditional setting for the pastoral.

Originating in classical antiquity, and less prominent in the Middle Ages, the genre revived in the Renaissance, and continued to be very important until at least the eighteenth century. From Romanticism onwards, living in a rural and natural setting continued to be a major concern in the arts, but usually without protagonists imagined as farmworkers, the essential mark of the pastoral.

Source and attribution

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