An idyll is a certain poetic genre characterized by a stable theme, in particular, an idealized description of reality, where feelings, norms and morals are most close to the true nature of people. From Greek, this term translates as “song” or “picture”. This genre, although it has a sustainable theme, is very diverse.
He was born mainly due to the ideological struggle of feudal noble culture and bourgeois-urban groups. At that time, reality was rapidly changing. More and more people moved from villages to cities. The structure of life and thinking became more complicated, and this could not but cause a corresponding reaction of some groups.
An idyll is a return to genuine naturalness. Adherents of this genre stand for maximum simplicity, for the revival of a former life, where nature and man are inextricably and harmoniously connected with each other. The stability of such topics as the idyll is due to the inviolability and immutability of certain socio-psychological processes that occur under certain social conditions.
Is this genre relevant today? Of course. However, it has significantly changed. The classical idyll is characterized by artificial naturalness. In it, ordinary workers, people below the middle class, speak a refined language, and amaze with their educational level. Some texts, glorifying simple village life, contain elements from court reality. Classical idyll is a strongly embellished being, where there is no place for realism. Village life appears here as an eternal holiday, where labor and other hardships are replaced by contemplation of nature and unattainable harmony.
However, despite all the shortcomings of the genre, it was extremely popular among all walks of life. Books written in this subject have attracted the attention of even those against whom they were directed. For example, at the court of Marie Antoinette, imitation of village life and great proximity to nature were extremely relevant.
In the 18th century, the petty and middle bourgeoisie began to struggle with the naturalness of the idyll. It was at that time that the genre underwent some changes, becoming more realistic. A new idyll is a chanting of utopian philistine life, where loyalty to simplicity and closeness to nature is intertwined with hatred for the class struggle and turmoil in capitalist cities. The genre of the era of industrial upheavals is riddled with romanticism. A plot is typical for him, in which the main character gets tired of the cruelty and deceit of big cities, and leaves for some distant countries in which the utopian idea of an idyll is embodied.
This genre was once popular with Russian writers, mostly of noble origin. However, he was most often imitative. Soon, the idyll began to lose its relevance. This happened mainly because of the recognition of the huge difference between ordinary peasants and the petty bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, isolated cases of creating works in this genre can be noted.
As already indicated, the idyll (the dictionary gives this definition) is characterized by a wide variety of its forms. Works in this genre were written both in verse and in prose, and sometimes a mixture of both. Distinctive properties of this topic are the following: familiar vocabulary, straightforward plot, calm tone of narration, happy denouement, folklore material. An important place in the structure of the genre is occupied by the family idyll, praised by many writers. The size of works written in this subject can range from a small poem to a voluminous story.