The Oaten Flute

Book excerpt: In a note discussing his writing plans, Renato Poggioli wrote that the book he was working on "tries to reconstruct and reinterpret the bucolic ideal as presented in the idyllic or quasi-idyllic literature of the past. The emphasis lies on the modern bucolic tradition, from the early Renaissance to the seventeenth and eighteenth century neoclassicism and preromanticism, from Sannazaro to Rousseau, but attention is also paid to the great classical precedent, as well as to the conscious or unconscious survivals of the bucolic attitude in the literature of our times. Each chapter or section deals with a separate theme and is centered on the critical analysis of one or more literary texts, typical or representative of that theme." With his death in an automobile accident on May 3, 1963, Poggioli's projected book remained unfinished. -- Foreword.