ABSTRACT
Arcadia was established in the Eclogues, which may be best appreciated in contrast with Virgil’s Georgics. Arcadia is significantly an alpine region that is cut off on all sides by other high mountains. It was the perfect location for a poetic paradise, a literary construct of a past Golden Age in which to retreat by linguistic idealisation. Culture was entwined in nature for the Arcadians. And that is exactly how Amazonian people live, where culture is woven with nature’s vivacity and nature is intricate with culture’s meanings. Arcadia is a borderland in which not only shape-shifting is possible, but also status, role and, in the drama, gender changing too. Social uncertainties such as these can be explored within the frame of nostalgic stability such as the feudal rural society of medieval romance. The apparently natural social order of feudal Arcadia becomes, in these texts, the natural social order of a supposedly stable present.
