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An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics. The term is also used for a musical genre thought of as evoking a pastoral scene.
As a genre of poetry, Eclogues began with the Latin poet Virgil, whose collection of ten Eclogae was ultimately modelled on the Idyll of Theocritus.James R. G. Wright, "Virgil’s Pastoral Programme", Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, NS 29 (209) (1983), pp. 107-160 and was alternatively termed Bucolica. (2025). 9781853996764, Duckworth. ISBN 9781853996764 Eclogue Found there was a sophisticated mixture of pastoral dialogues, song contests and contemporary references. Virgil's term was used by later Latin poets to refer to their own pastoral poetry, often in imitation of Virgil, as in the cases of the Eclogae of Calpurnius Siculus and the Eclogae of Nemesianus. Calpurnius also employed rustic vocabulary and archaic expressions to add to their distancing effect. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Edmund Spenser was also inspired by Mantuan's eclogues, as well as by Virgil and Theocritus, when he composed the Shepheardes Calendar (1579), a series of twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year. The Concise Companion to English Literature Each is titled an Aegloga and contains for the most part dialogues by different speakers on a variety of subjects. In the background too is the example of Calpurnius, manifested here in the antiquated vocabulary drawn from John Skelton and Geoffrey Chaucer. And behind the plain (but far from unlettered) language is vigorous allusion to contemporary events, particularly the proposed marriage between the queen and a Catholic Frenchman.R. S. Bear, "Introduction to The Shepheardes Calender", Renascence Editions Spenser's eclogues were youthful work, as were Alexander Pope's Pastorals, consisting of four shepherd dialogues divided between the seasons. They were originally composed in 1704 but first published in 1709; 18th century editions online and to the 1717 edition, Pope added his originally intended "Discourse on Pastoral Poetry" in which he acknowledged the examples of Theocritus and Virgil ("the only undisputed authors of Pastoral") along with Spenser. University of Wuppertal
In between had come Phineas Fletcher's Piscatorie Eclogs (1633), imitations of Sannazaro's much earlier Eclogae Piscatoriae (Fishermen's eclogues, 1526), in which the traditional shepherds are exchanged for fishermen from the Bay of Naples. He was followed in this refocussing of the traditional subject matter in the following century by William Diaper, in whose Nereides: or Sea-Eclogues (1712) the speakers are sea-gods and sea-nymphs.
In Scotland Allan Ramsay brought the novelty of Scots language to his two pastoral dialogues of 1723, "Patie and Roger" and "Jenny and Meggy", before expanding them into the pastoral drama of The Gentle Shepherd in the following year. Later the eclogue was further renewed by being set in exotic lands, first by the Persian Eclogues (1742) of William Collins, a revised version of which titled Oriental Eclogues was published in 1757. It was followed by the three African Eclogues (1770) of Thomas Chatterton, and by Scott of Amwell's three Oriental Eclogues (1782) with settings in Arabia, Bengal and Tang dynasty China. The Cabinet of Poetry: Containing the Best Entire Pieces to be Found in the Works of the British Poets, London 1808, Volume VI, pp. 74–86
In 1811 the fortunes of the Peninsular War brought the subject back to Europe in the form of four Spanish Eclogues, including an elegy on the death of the Marquis de la Romana issued under the pseudonym Hispanicus. These were described in a contemporary review as "formed on the model of Collins". The British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review, Volume 37, p.629 In the following decade they were followed by a vernacular "Irish eclogue", Darby and Teague, a satirical account of a royal visit to Dublin ascribed to William Russell Macdonald (1787–1854). The Dublin Mail, London 1824, pp. 127–34
Two further pieces for solo piano followed in the new century: Egon Wellesz's "4 eclogues", Op. 11, 1912, Oxford Reference and Jean Sibelius's Ekloge, the first of his "4 lyric pieces for piano", Op. 74, 1914. Music Web International Similar titles were given the second and third movements of Igor Stravinsky's Duo Concertant ("Eclogue I" and "Eclogue II", 1932), while the middle movement of his three-movement Ode (1943) is also titled "Eclogue". Gerald Finzi's "Eclogue" for piano and string orchestra, Op. 10, was revised in the 1940s and given that title then. Boosey and Hawkes An "Eclogue" for horn and strings by Maurice Blower dates from about the 1950s. Gramophone In the 21st century, American composer Henry Justin Rubin's Egloga for violin and piano dates from 2006. Score at the University of Minnesota
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