Et in Arcadia Ego: The Pastoral Ideal, from Antiquity to the Present

In this seminar we will explore ancient Greek and Roman ideas and images of the idealized landscape, reading examples of the pastoral ideal from Greek authors such as Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Theocritus, and Longus and Roman authors such as Vergil, Horace, and Ovid. We will read these works in conversation with the larger tradition of the pastoral and idealized landscape as represented in the landscapes of Roman frescoes, Chinese ink paintings, and French oil paintings, continuing to the modern evolution of the anti-pastoral or post-pastoral positions represented by ecocriticism. Works will be read in translation (although graduate students and advanced undergraduates may elect to read the original Greek and Latin texts for appropriate credit).