Eclogue

eclogue

Short, usually pastoral, poem in the form of a dialogue or soliloquy (see pastoral). The eclogue as a pastoral form first appeared in the idylls of Theocritus, was adopted by Virgil, and was revived in the Renaissance by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender, a series of 12 eclogues, was the first outstanding pastoral poem in English. Eighteenth-century English poets used the eclogue for ironic verse on nonpastoral subjects. Since then a distinction has been made between eclogue and pastoral, with eclogue referring only to the dialogue or soliloquy form.

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Eclogue 

a type of idyll. An eclogue is a genre scene, usually a love scene, of conventional pastoral life. It may be written in narrative or dramatic form. In classical literature no distinction was made between the idyll, for example, those of Theocritus, and the eclogue, for example, Vergil’s Bucolics. Writers of the 18th-century classical school considered that the idyll required more emotion, and the eclogue more action; such were the first Russian eclogues, by A. P. Sumarokov. However, the distinction was not strictly observed. The genre had become obsolete by the early 19th century.