A Structuralist Study of Christopher Marlowe’s "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and its Pastiches

Abstract

This research paper presents a structuralist analysis of Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (1599) and two of its pastiches. Marlowe's poem is a pastoral poem that focuses on the idyllic country life. The profound influence of the poem transcends literature where even artists and musicians drew inspiration from it. Numerous poets imitated or parodied the poem in their own styles including John Donne's “The Bait” (1633) and William Carlos Williams’ "Raleigh was Right" (1962). Despite essentially paying homage to Marlowe's poem, these two pastiches are diverse in both their thematic and stylistic elements. This study compares these poems in the aspects of their themes and styles to examine the way they reflect their respective genres and times. The proposed framework is structuralist in essence as it allows the examination of the wider structures underlying the poems and the analysis of the interplay of the themes and stylistic elements. Essentially, this study analyses the conventions within the three poems and the pastiches’ similarities or differences compared to Marlowe's poem. The study concluded that these poems convey different thematic elements through varying binaries which are influenced by their respective genres and eras. Compared to the original, the pastiches critique the traditional idea of love and gender roles by exploring varied aspects of the concepts, and incorporating, especially in the case of Williams, modernist and economic concerns.