The pastoral mode

Abstract

The pastoral mode is represented in Cretan literature by Chortatsis's rural comedy Panoria , the anonymous Cretan adaptation of Guarini's Pastor Fido and the poetical idyll The Shepherdess . To these can be added an interesting pastoral episode in the Erotokritos and the play L'Amorosa Fede , which was composed in Italian by a young Cretan author, apparently for performance in Crete, and has a local setting, theme and political message. I Mount Ida, the Cretan Arcadia The pleasures of the countryside have always been dear to Crete's residents, ever since the Minoans worshipped the Great Goddess of nature and adorned their walls and pottery with scenes of pastoral life. Now that the island's natural luxuriance is being pinched to a thin strip between the deforested uplands and the increasingly urbanised lowlands, it is hard, especially for summer visitors, to realise how fertile it was in Venetian times. The seaside plains, the foothills and plateaus were planted with orchards, vineyards, olivegroves, cornfields and vegetable plots, while the upper meadows, cypress-dominated forests and rocky mountain slopes yielded abundant game (deer, wild goat, hares and wildfowl) to be shot with bow and arrow, netted or snared, as well as culinary and medicinal herbs such as dittany, reputed to heal wounded deer.

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