SOURCE: “Characterization and Rhetoric in Sidney's “Ye Goatherd Gods,” in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring, 1978, pp. 115–24.

In the following essay, Litt asserts that Sidney uses imagery, syntax, diction, grammar, and metaphor to differentiate the characters and experience of the two shepherds in the Old Arcadia poem, “Ye Goatherd Gods.”

Sidney's “Ye Goatherd Gods” is a masterful demonstration of formal and verbal artifice. The poem is virtually unmatched in rhetorical intricacy and complex manipulation of mood and environment, and deserves the praise and careful attention Empson, Kalstone, Ransom, and others have given it.¹ However, the depth, charm, and accomplishment of the poem is even more considerable upon recognition of the complex characterization of the shepherds—an aspect of the work which has generally been ignored. This characterization is a culminating effect of the poem, for Sidney not only masters an unnatural and difficult form, but also...