A Companion to Pastoral Poetry of the English Renaissance

This volume is an essential supplement to <i>Pastoral poetry of the English Renaissance: An anthology </i>(2016). The full-length Introduction examines English Renaissance pastoral against the history of the mode from antiquity to the present with its multifarious themes and social affinities. The study covers many genres - eclogue lyric georgic country-house poem ballad romantic epic prose romance - and major practitioners - Theocritus Virgil Sidney Spenser Drayton and Milton. It also charts the circulation of pastoral texts with implications for all early modern poetry. All poems in the <i>Anthology</i> were edited from the original texts; the <i>Companion</i> documents the sources and variant readings in unprecedented detail for a cross-section of early modern poetry. Includes notes on the poets and analytical indices. The <i>Companion</i> is indispensable not only to users of the <i>Anthology</i> but to all students and advanced scholars of Renaissance poetry.<b></b>