Rapin’s Latin treatise on pastoral poetry laid down the rules that shaped European pastoral for a century, and in 1684 it was translated and prefixed to Thomas Creech’s English Theocritus. He traces the form to Theocritus and Virgil, discusses the decorum proper to shepherds and their speech, and answers critics from Aristotle onward. The Augustan Reprint Society text adds an introduction by J. E. Congleton.
A key document of neoclassical criticism for students of Pope, Dryden and the pastoral. Download the free EPUB.