Idylle et utopie: le modèle pastoral
Idyll and Utopia: The Model for the Pastoral

Summary/Abstract: The genre of the pastoral was brought to life by the desire to return to Nature and to create an idyllic and utopian world in the middle of the 16th century. The birth of the genre following the ancient tradition, and yet modern and original, was accompanied by a serious theoretical debate, the most important figure of which was Giovanni Battista Guarini, the author of the play entitled “Il pastor fido”. The extremely popular dramatic genre has a very early reception in Hungary: Bálint Balassi translates the pastoral Amarilli by Cristoforo Castelletti, but the genre does not become an important and significant part of the Hungarian theatre repertoire before the end of the 17th century.However, this type of drama is not uniform: within the typology of the pastoral can be sharply distinguished the allegorical and symbolical festivity plays given at the occasion of school performances, imbued with religious content (which type reflects the Baroque taste and conception of form) and the pastorals with the theme of love, exempt from allegorical meaning (which reflect the Rococo taste). Some of the allegorical pastorals represented the allegory of Christus, others were dedicated to high priests or teachers. In the study I also analyze unpublished dramatic manuscripts.

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