An enquiry into the pastoral tradition directed towards a reading of Milton's 'Lycidas' by John Gielgud
(at approximately 10.30)
Pastoral elegy starts with Theocritus. But the material of the elegy, the lament for the dying vegetation personified in the figure of a beautiful half-divine being, /is already present in the liturgies of Sumeria. This programme follows the passage from religion to literature and traces the development of the pastoral form from Alexandria to the Renaissance. It is a prolegomenon to a reading of Lycidas, the poem that inherits and consummates the entire tradition.
Translations by William Arrowsmith , Edwin Morgan
Ian Scott-Kilvert , Iain Fletcher
Narrator: Iain Fletcher
Readers:
Jill Balcon, Robert Farquharson
Denis McCarthy , Gary Watson
Devised by D. S. Carne-Ross