Abstract
A character may leave the city for the country and return in the end; or the narrative may remain in the country, among shepherds singing about romantic subjects, only to return to the city through contrast; or the urban may return of its own accord into the rural-the corrupt may infiltrate the borders of the pristine.1 In addition to geographical or spatial categories, pastoral retreat and return also signal temporal movement. Scholars, especially in the field of ecocriticism, have adapted pastoral criticism's long history by bringing the mode under fire for its hazardous approach to land use; for many, pastoral promotes polarizing the urban and the rural into reality and escapist simplicity, respectively.2 For example, Virgil's Eclogues discusses its rural setting's social problems while also describing characters who attempt to maintain their pastoral setting by repressing these social problems.