ABSTRACT
The cultural context in which the pastoral is written provides a way of reading and evaluating the results of pastoral return. The cultural context of return in The Tempest is not indirect as in As You Like It, or structural as in The Winter’s Tale, but direct to the very audience by whose presence it has its life as a drama. The death in 1996 of the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean brought to an end a remarkable career in which a pastoral poet was never more aware of the cultural contexts in which his poetry was being read in two languages since the 1930s. John MacInnes says that MacLean never produced a neologism in Gaelic, but that he has ‘invented his own diction’ and ‘there are times when he appears to be pushing Gaelic to its limits’. In this poem the traditional Gaelic pastoral form is engaging with new dangers.
