La Voix de l’ombre: pastorale et mélancolie dans l’Arcadie de Sir Philip Sidney

Abstract

The melancholic pastoral mode plays a limited but essential role in the complex architecture of Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia. It contributes to the narrative demonstration that the pastoral retreat is a trap. The princes increasingly seek the solitariness of deserted places ever further away from their original heroic focus until they withdraw into the cave which inverts the temple motif of Montemayor’s Diana. Pastoral melancholy is also essential in the poetic production of the eclogues that cannot be discounted in spite of the unfinished state of the text. Solitariness triggers a reflexive, involved and existential poetry in which the princes ponder on the somber aspects of the human plight. Erotemas, oxymorons, phonic and semantic echoes, inverted vistas, the expressionistic accents of pathetic fallacy fashion and refashion wavering and uncertain mental landscapes. Interrogations multiply and enduring meaning often seems beyond reach. The speakers seem swayed by violent passions and impotently falter, in the throes of delusions. But their dark ruminations ultimately lead them to acknowledge the need to trust in Providence to answer the needs of a failing and fallible creature.