Pastoral and Satire in John Gay's Poetry

Abstract

This bachelor thesis is concerned with the selected pastoral poetry by John Gay (1685 - 1732), namely Rural Sports (1713) and The Shepherd's Week (1714). The first part of the thesis focuses on presenting a definition of pastoral literature and traces its origins and further development. Because John Gay uses a lot of satirical allusions, satire is also introduced. The analysis of Gay's adaptation of two main pastoral aspects is covered in the second and third part of the thesis respectively. The conclusion summarizes the results.