“The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia” by Philip Sidney is a prose pastoral romance written towards the end of the 16th century. This ambitious work blends idealized shepherd life with dramatic tales of jousts, political intrigue, kidnappings, and battles. When a duke receives an ominous oracle predicting stolen daughters and a usurped throne, he retreats to a pastoral lodge—hoping to escape fate. Sidney significantly revised and expanded his original version before his death,creating two major texts that scholars call the Old and New Arcadia. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
| Author | Sidney, Philip, 1554-1586 |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Bellings, Richard, 1613-1677 |
| Contributor | Stirling, William Alexander, Earl of, 1568?-1640 |
| Editor | Baker, Ernest A. (Ernest Albert), 1869-1941 |
| Title | The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia |
| Original Publication | United Kingdom: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1907. |
| Credits | an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 54.1 (10th to 12th grade). Somewhat difficult to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PR: Language and Literatures: English literature |
| Subject |
Pastoral literature, English |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 70854 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 86307 downloads in the last 30 days. |