SOURCE: Polhemus, Robert M. “Pastoral Erotics: Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (1874).” In Erotic Faith: Being in Love from Jane Austen to D. H. Lawrence, pp. 223-50. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

In the following chapter from his full-length study of eroticism in the works of several novelists, Polhemus examines representations of love and pastoralism in Far from the Madding Crowd, using Claude Lorrain's painting Judgment of Paris as a point of comparison.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Psalm 23:1

There's a somebody I'm longing to see I hope that he Turns out to be Someone to watch over me. I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood; I know I could Always be good To one who'll watch over me. 

Ira Gershwin¹

The Cyprian Queen, my children, is not only the Cyprian; there are many other names she bears. She is Death...