Before Pastoral: Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry

by David M. Halperin

Genres: Poetry

290 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 1983

Reviews

[Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before Halperin became a leading queer theorist, he was a classicist! This book reads at times like a dissertation (i.e., repetitive, not always well edited) but is remarkably free of jargon and offers one of the most well-reasoned, and at times even exciting, interpretations of Theocritus within the context of Homeric and Hesiodic epic. Halperin also makes great strides in placing bucolic poetry firmly within 3rd-century Alexandrian aesthetics, rather than looking at Theocritus through the lens of his great successor Vergil.