牧歌に於ける死者

Abstract

This essay deals with the dead in Theocritus', Vergil's, Spenser's, and Wordsworth's pastorals. Its aim is to study how the dead are described in those pastorals, and consider the relation between the ideal world, and time which seems a destructive element in the ideal world. There is no mutability in Theocritus' sweet world. Daphnis' death is not regarded as decay caused by mutability in his Idyll. Vergil creates "Arcadia" as the ideal world which is beyond time. There is a consciousness of mutability behind his idea of "Arcadia." His dead Daphnis is respected as a god who brings peace to his people because everyone knows the peaceful world is destroyed easily and immediately. Spenser has a consciousness of time. So he gives the calender structure to his eclogues. His Dido dies, and revives in the Christian heaven which is his ideal world beyond time. Wordsworth's ideal world is nature. He gives the most important role to nature which has been an important but subordinate element of pastoral from the beginning. His dead becomes a part of nature. Only eternal nature exists after his Michael dies.