Mr. Empson sees the pastoral convention as including not only poems of shepherd life but any work "about the people but not by or for" them. Finding examples in the writing of every country and century, from Mencius to William Faulkner or C line, he concentrates on an analysis of certain works and forms in English literature, several of them, like Alice in Wonderland, Troilus and Cressida, and proletarian novels not traditionally considered pastoral...