Pastoral refers to the lifestyle of shepherds and pastoralists, moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability of water and feed.

Pastoral art

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In art, whether literature, painting, or another form, it refers to rural subjects such as villages, herdsmen, and milkmaids, that are romanticized and depicted in a highly unrealistic manner.

A work can contain many pastoral elements mixed with other genres. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, though taking place among shepherds in Arcadia, features the royal family, who have retired to the countryside for peace, and centers on the romances of princes and princesses. The fourth act of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale features a pastoral setting, but the focus is on the apparent shepherdess, Perdita, who is actually a foundling and a princess, and the setting is intruded on by her princely lover Florizel, and by his disapproving father the king. Sir Calidore, the Knight of Courtesy in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen finds that the Blatant Beast is unknown among the shepherds, but he himself comes from outside, and the shepherdess Pastorella whom he loves is revealed at the end to be a foundling, the daughter of a knight and lady. Indeed, many foundlings in literature are taken up by the pure and simple folk of the pastoral, but are themselves of higher birth and from civilization, to which they return at the story's end.

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