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Finding another Alexis: pastoral tradition and the reception of Vergil’s second eclogue

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/crj/clu024

1759-5142

Erik Fredericksen,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

This article offers a reading of Vergil’s second eclogue in which the lonely shepherd Corydon finds consolation for his failed love by writing and joining the community of literary tradition. By instantiating a pastoral-erotic tradition, Corydon ensures that his pleas will not go unheard or unanswered. The article then traces the relation of this ideal model of tradition to the actual reception of Vergil’s poem, surveying the reception history of Eclogue 2 from Vergil’s time to our own. The poem has had a problematic reception due to its homoeroticism, and the very tradition of erotic pastoral it attempts to initiate has been continually thwarted by various critical reading strategies devised to minimize or efface the poem’s homoerotic content. Nonetheless, this article argues that Corydon’s desire has been a central, if obfuscated, presence in the western pastoral tradition. Finally, the article examines a recent reception of Vergil’s eclogue, in two short poems by the contemporary American poet D.A. Powell. Powell’s poems (re-)claim the tradition of Eclogue 2 and offer a belated response to Corydon’s apostrophic pleas, while still registering the difficulty of affirming such a tradition and reaching Vergil’s poem through its highly contested reception history.