Pastoral between Words and Things: Theocritus, Ekphrasis, and Ontology

Abstract

This article proposes that the problem of pastoral irony (as formulated in Harry Berger’s seminal article on strong and weak pastoral) and the nature of ekphrasis are both clarified if they are understood as expressions of the desire for an escape from meaningful, signifying language and into the materiality of objects. Drawing on responses to Theocritus, readings of ekphrasis, and philosophical interpretations of the boundary between words and things, I argue that pastoral irony represents an initial moment of escape from signification, and ekphrasis a final moment of representing objects, mediated by a paradoxical object representing the negation of meaning.