Relying on close reading to analyse enumerations of “sweet” details in The Affectionate Shepheard (1594), this article explores the connection between Richard Barnfield’s poetic of profusion and the pastoral rhetoric of seduction at play in the poet’s eclogues. The sense of cornucopian abundance created by the wealth of diminutive food items available in the pastoral setting – notably fruit, berries, and small game meat – serves the fictional persona’s endeavour to seduce Ganymede. Indeed, the sweetness of these items connects them to a network of synaesthetic impressions in which they take on erotic connotations. For instance, the shape, size, and content of the multiple berries on offer, as this article demonstrates, is symbolically tied to testicles and semen. In this regard, the pastoral catalogues take on a crucial part in the persona’s rhetorical strategy, the aim of which is not only to invite his beloved, the aptly named Ganymede, into the Arcadian landscape, but also to encourage sexual favours from him. The earthly pleasures promised in the shepherd’s locus amoenus, where profusion is inherently tied to sexual gratification, encourage a reflection on the notion of fecundity. The shepherd’s invitations go to suggest that procreation, which is impossible in Daphnis’s homoerotic fantasy, finds substitution in poetic creation.
Johann Paccou (Wed,) studied this question.