Characteristics of the PASTORILES novels

Within the history of Spanish literature, the pastoral novels, a narrative subgenre that was very popular during the Golden age and that it had a large number of authors who produced stories of this style. Not only was it a popular type of text in Spain but throughout Europe there was a "boom" of these novels that recreated a type of bucolic and idealized life of rural people and the day to day in the world of the countryside. It is a very versatile genre that could be cultivated in both prose and verse and that was essential for the further development of literature and the path to the achievement of the novel modern.

In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to show you the main characteristics of pastoral novels and examples so that you can learn to better detect this type of literary text that was so successful in its time.

But before entering fully to know the characteristics of pastoral novels it is important that let's pause briefly on the definition of the genre so that we know what novels are pastoralists. This type of novel is based on the pastoral literature tradition, a type of literary that was related to the

lyricand that was born from the hand of Greek poet Theocritus. These texts were characterized by being dialogues between two shepherds who spoke about their love affairs in an idealized way, full of preciousness.

In addition to Theocritus, there were many poets who continued this legacy. A clear example of this is that of Virgil, Roman poet who continued with the pastoral tradition but giving it an innovative touch: he made real and historical characters appear in the texts, such as Emperor Augustus. During the Middle Ages pastoral literature was also cultivated by such renowned authors as Bocaccio.

But it wasn't until the sixteenth century when the pastoral novel appeared as we know it today. JI gather Sannazaro was the author who shaped the genre by endowing it with some outstanding characteristics such as, for example, the story of a story of love, the location in rural areas and environments, an idealized environment, the protagonists are shepherds or people from the rural world, etc. In addition, the most outstanding innovation that the 19th century brought was that this type of text combined both prose and verse, thus creating hybrid and more current texts.

Definition of pastoral novel

Now that we have briefly known the origin of the genre it is important that we clearly define what the pastoral novel is. It's about a Renaissance narrative subgenre that offers us a idealized vision of the world and of human beings. The theme on which the plot revolves is always loving and nature is of vital importance in the text since it contributes to idealize the story and to convey a scenario full of peace and harmony.

The pastoral novel has a slow and very descriptive rhythm in which the setting takes on a very prominent role. During the plot it is analyzed in detail the feelings and emotions of the characters who are experiencing an experience of love or lack of love that alters their spiritual peace.

In Spain, the pastoral genre can begin to be observed in the eclogues of Garcilaso de la Vega but it was Jorge de Montemayor who fully cultivated the genre with the publication of "Diana" in 1559, a work that was a huge success throughout Europe and, of course, also in Spain.

We are now going to go into the characteristics of pastoral novels in order to learn more concisely all the elements that make these texts considered pastoral. Although this subgenus began to be cultivated in Ancient Greece, its total configuration was not until the 16th century due to the aesthetics of the Renaissancein which they bet on returning their eyes to the classics. This is how the authors rediscovered some of these works and updated them.

The features of pastoral novels most outstanding are as follows:

• Love theme: Of course, one of the main characteristics of these novels is that they revolved around love. And, furthermore, this love is always closely linked to Christian morality and offers us an idealized conception of the sentiment of love.
• Idealization of reality: is another of the most outstanding points within the pastoral novel and is that the authors tended to show us an idealized reality in which both the environment and human emotions were shown embellished.
• Rural setting: in the Renaissance there was a return to the rural environment as a return to the origins and the purity of life. Therefore, rural environments and motifs were idealized and shown as a place similar to paradise lost, that is, the "locus amoenus".
• The importance of landscape: the landscape in the pastoral genre has a very prominent importance since the description of the environment was made to emphasize that idealizing vision of the world. Therefore, the landscape stopped being a passive element to become something active of the text that contributed to its message.
• Beginnings "in media res": Another characteristic of pastoral novels is that these works used to begin towards the middle of the plot, that is, at the middle of the story. In this way, they constituted narratives that went from the past to the future to give more rhythm and suspense to the argument.
• Rural protagonists: Just as the environment in which the plot takes place is always located in rural areas, the main characters in these novels are also typical of this environment. Shepherds are the usual protagonists of stories that, in the shade of a tree and in the middle of nature, explain their loves or heartbreaks to us. But, although they present themselves to us as shepherds, the truth is that they were characters that seemed more like courtiers because of their speech and behavior.
• Mythological characters: During the narration it is also common for characters from classical mythology to appear and who are decisive for the development of the story.
• Verse and prose: it is another of the most outstanding elements of these novels. The authors combined highly refined prose passages with other poems with varied metrics.
• Different subplots: It is also very common that, throughout the narration, different stories and plots are interspersed with other secondary characters.
• Mix of comedy and tragedy: Another characteristic of pastoral novels is that throughout the narrative we find the mixture of comic and tragic situations, a duality that allows to reflect the love theme in a greater amplitude.
• Greco-Latin influence: and we finish this list to indicate that the reason why this genus was recovered was that the Renaissance returned to recover the classics and, therefore, the poems of the ancients were its source of inspiration.

We conclude this lesson to show some examples of a pastoral novel. We have already commented previously that, in Spain, it was Jorge de Montemayor (a Portuguese who wrote in Spanish) who achieved enormous success in the pastoral field. In fact, his work "Diana" was the seed of inspiration for other authors like Alonso Pérez to create the "Second part of the Diana" or Gaspar Gil Polo will create "Diana in love " in 1564.

The pastoral novel had a huge following in Spain and, some examples of this genre, are the following works:

• The ten books of Fortune of Love by Antonio de Lofraso (1573)
• The shepherd of Fílida (1582) by Luis Gálvez de Montalvo
• The galatea (1585) by Miguel de Cervantes
• Nymphs and shepherds of Henares (1587) by Bernardo González de Bobadilla
• The Arcadia (1598) by Félix Lope de Vega
• The Golden Age in the jungles of Erifile (1608) by Bernardo de Balbuena