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Theocritus and the Development of the Conception of Bucolic Genre

From our viewpoint, the bucolic genre begins with Theocritus, though ancient critics considered him not the founder but the best in a class. The difference between their perception and ours will serve to remind us that no idea of genre can be taken for granted. Generic conceptions, like any other products of literary work, have history. Implied in the work of poets, they are the practical marks of similarity and thus also touchstones of significant difference with respect to other modes of discourse in a period; and through time they measure continuity and change in a tradition. From the actual texts, however, critics abstract conceptions of genre according to the tastes, interests, received and new ideas — intellectual currency of their own time. Abstracted, then, and cast in simple and intelligible form, they begin a tralatitious life in ambivalent, quasi independent relation to their texts of origin. They do provide a ready general view of the material, but by this very virtue tend to substitute themselves for it. Ersatz, vicarious, they satisfy and misinform the reader, cutting off effective access to the texts. Useful, then, yet pernicious, go-betweens that get between, generic conceptions partake of the double nature of critical discourse, procuring insight and blindness, like some pharmakon, both good news and bad news.