Longtemps attendu et extrêmement bien accueilli, A History of Arcadia de PaulHolberton constitue l’examen approfondi et minutieux d’un grand nombre de textesoriginaux de poésie pastorale classique des époques moderne et contemporaine, delittérature et de théâtre en grec ancien, en latin, en italien, en français, en espagnol,en portugais, en néerlandais, en allemand et en anglais et d’un large éventail d’imagesprenant fin juste avant 1800. L’ouvrage analyse le développement de la pastoralecomme moyen de représentation du bonheur humain sur Terre à travers la courréciproque entre un garçon et une fille, et leurs sentiments auxquels la pastorale del’époque donne voix.This tremendous book is an iconographic study of Renaissance and Baroque pastoral andrelated subject matter, with an important chapter on the 18th century, both in the visualarts, where pastoral is very poorly understood, and in words and performance, aboutwhich many false preconceptions prevail.The study begins with Virgil’s use of Theocritus and an analysis of what basis Virgilprovided for Renaissance pastoral and what, by contrast, stemmed from the medievalpastourelle. Pastoral developed notably in the Venetian High Renaissance. Its textsincorporated Petrarchist and Neoplatonic ideas of love, of which this book charts thedevelopment and evolution with unprecedented precision, considering also the femalenude in art. There is a novel and polemical discussion of the development of landscapesubjects in art, from Giorgione to Claude. The contributions of the most influential orrepresentative authors – Petrarch, Sannazaro, Montemayor, Tasso, Guarino, Lope deVega, Cervantes, Honoré d’Urfé, Cornelis de Hooft, Shakespeare and lastly SalomonGessner – are considered beside many interesting more minor ones – Arsocchi,Bernardim Ribeiro, Clément Marot, Cieco d’Adria, John Fletcher, Fontenelle – and theverses of madrigals.There is a chapter on ‘Being Rural’ – what we can say about the reality of life inthe country in the early modern period. There is a chapter on ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ thatintroduces new evidence for the dating of Poussin’s famous work by reference to aneglected work by Sébastien Bourdon in Yale; another on a pastoral composition byRubens that has not been considered as such. There is an important and bold discussionof self-projection (‘metachronic’ representation) by monarchs and courtiers acrossEurope in the 17th century, both within pastoral and without, which illuminates profounddifferences between Protestant and Catholic culture. Coming from the study of earlierperiods, the author is able to throw new light on the Rococo – figures such as John Gay,Watteau, Gessner and Gainsborough – and to explain the termination of pastoral writingand art with the embrace of modernity in form and means of expression.All texts are given in the original language and all translated into English, while thevisuals are beautifully reproduced: the book is also an anthology.