Who has not dreamt at least once of escaping the hassle of modern life by seeking refuge in the tranquillity of the countryside, or in the solitude of the wilderness? The more urbanised, complex and self-aware a society becomes, the more it seems to look for its ???lost innocence???: a dream-time of purity, simplicity, and harmony with the forces of nature. No symbol of such a mythical Golden Age has been employed by poets and musicians more often than the pastoral world: ever since Greek and Roman Antiquity, shepherds have been portrayed as the guardians of poetic sensibility, sincere emotions, uncorrupted life. This theme repeatedly influenced intellectuals and artists of the French and Italian Renaissance, reached its highest point of formal perfection in Baroque France, and in many ways it still speaks to us today as it did many centuries ago??? book