n.
Short, usually pastoral, poem in the form of a dialogue or soliloquy (see pastoral ).
The eclogue as a pastoral form first appeared in the idyll s of Theocritus , was adopted by Virgil , and was revived in the Renaissance by Dante , Petrarch , and Boccaccio . Edmund Spenser 's Shepheardes Calender , a series of 12 eclogues, was the first outstanding pastoral poem in English. Eighteenth-century English poets used the eclogue for ironic verse on nonpastoral subjects. Since then a distinction has been made between eclogue and pastoral, with eclogue referring only to the dialogue or soliloquy form.