The piscatorial eclogue is a

genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...

of poetry from

Renaissance Italy The Italian Renaissance ( ) was a period in History of Italy, Italian history between the 14th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked t ...

. A variation on the

pastoral The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...

, it substitutes fishermen at sea for shepherds in the fields. It originated in the 1490s, with the Neapolitan poet

Jacopo Sannazaro Jacopo Sannazaro (; 28 July 1458 – 6 August 1530) was an Italian poet, Renaissance humanism, humanist, member and head of the Accademia Pontaniana from Kingdom of Naples, Naples. He wrote easily in Latin language, Latin, in Italian and in Neap ...

's ''Eclogae piscatoriae''. Other examples of the genre include ''Ecloga Carolina'' by

André de Resende André de Resende ( –1573) was a Portuguese humanist Dominican friar, classical scholar, poet, and antiquarian. Resende is regarded as the father of archeology in Portugal. Early life and travels Resende was born c. 1498 in Évora, the son of P ...

(1558/9). and ''Almon'' by Antonio Querenghi (1566). Resende's poem, rendered in English prose, begins:

Quite often, when the bright moon recedes from the sea, already fleeing the yellow sands of the radiant Tagus, with home-coming face, and the golden sun (lofty torch of the starry sky) follows his sister with his radiance as he rises, the watchful fisherm an drags shoals into his nets from the placid ocean, and they provide wretched sailors with recompense for a wretched night, bought with great labour, though the cloudy Southerly might come with vast force, churning up the waters of the sea and nearby river. But now we have tossed our nets so often into the sea's waters, and yet these shores deny us a catch of fish.

References

{{reflist Genres of poetry