Idylls are idealized poems, images, and music that romanticize rural peasant life, particularly shepherds. The term comes from the Greek word eidyllion and was popular during the Romantic period. Theocritus wrote some of the earliest idylls, and the subject often includes the concept of the “noble savage.” Famous writers of idylls include Goethe, Leopardi, Tennyson, and Whittier. Idylls can also refer to pastoral paintings and musical compositions.
An idyll is a poem that idealizes the life of rural peasants. These idealized poems, such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s epic Idylls of the King, were particularly popular during the Romantic period. The term can also refer to images and music that romanticize the life of peasants and shepherds.
Theocritus, a 3rd century BC Greek writer, wrote some of the earliest recorded idylls. The term is an abbreviation of the Greek word eidyllion, which means “square”. Each idyll paints a picture of simple and pleasant peasant life.
Idylls are often called pastoral or bucolic literature because the most common subject is a shepherd. A pastoral can be a poem, a drama, a work of art, or a musical composition, while the vast majority of idylls are poems. In Christopher Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, published in 1599, the orator is a shepherd begging his beloved to live with him, with rocks for chairs and flowers for a bed.
Pastoral plays were common throughout Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, due to the popularity of Romanticism. Many writings have shown the concept of “noble savage”. While most often used to describe the tribal peoples of North America and Africa, the term refers to anyone who is close to nature, and therefore more noble than city-dwellers. This kind of noble savage is the main subject of most idylls.
Some famous writers of the idyll include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Giacomo Leopardi, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and John Greenleaf Whittier. Goethe wrote Hermann and Dorothea in Germany in the late 1700s, about the romance between Hermann, a citizen, and Dorothea, a compassionate refugee. In 1816 the Italian writer Leopardi wrote Hymn to Neptune in ancient Greek, imitating the idylls of Theocritus.
In 1866, American poet John Greenleaf Whittier published Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll, in which a family spends three days sharing stories around a fireplace as they wait out a blizzard. During the same period, Alfred, Lord Tennyson published twelve narrative poems called Idylls of the King in England. These poems were about the idealized life at King Arthur’s legendary court in Camelot.
The term idyll occasionally refers to bucolic paintings, such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s The Shepherdess and John Constable’s The Wheatfield. These paintings typically feature a serene farmer at work or a happy gathering set against a beautiful countryside backdrop of farm fields, streams or trees. Musical compositions with a similar theme, such as Edward MacDowell’s “Forest Idylls” or Jean-Baptiste’s “L’Idylle sur la Paix” can also be called idylls.
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