Pastoral motives in A Pitiful Comedy about Adam and Eve by J. G. Gregory

The paper examines the functioning of descriptions of the Garden of Eden in A Pitiful Comedy about Adam and Eve by Johann Gottfried Gregory, staged in 1675 at the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The description of the paradise garden in the play under study originates from the biblical tradition and is structured according to the Lutheran canon that was well-known to the author. The Russian play on the plot of Adam and Eve shows a connection with Paradise Lost by J. Milton. Following Milton, Gregory depicts Adam as the crown of creation of pastoral harmony. However, unlike Milton, Gregory’s pastoral descriptions in the play are of an inset character. The description of harmonic nature takes on a pastoral motif when the author starts imagining a particular (royal) garden as a biblical Eden, making the biblical descriptions of the garden expressive in an idyllic way. A similar technique can be found in the works of the English playwrights of the Elizabethan era, for example, in the plays of J. Peel. In Gregory’s play, a special place is occupied by the eclogue, the elements of which can be identified in the work of Juan del Encina. When considering the relationship between the concepts of “a pastoral,” “an idyll,” “a secular pastoral,” and “an eclogue”, one can find in Gregory’s play a clear predominance of secular pastoral with elements of idyll, which is due to the court orientation of the first Russian plays written for the theater of Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich.

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