Vergil, Eclogues
As noted in the page on Horace, Sermones, the Eclogues are in fact the earlier book, although the precise date is still subject to dispute; suffice it to say that Ecl. was probably completed in 35-34, and the Sermones perhaps a year later (and the Monobiblos perhaps a year after that). The bibliography on Ecl. is huge and diverse; I list below only two titles, with very different but equally worthwhile approaches. You can get more from the handbooks or from Clausen's commentary (not assigned, but much fuller and more thorough than Coleman's).
There are several approaches to the poems that are worth keeping in mind as you read; thorough investigation of any one of them leads to the others.
1. V. and Theocritus. What does V. take from Theocritus? Is V.'s version of pastoral the same as Th.'s? Why does V. choose this model in particular? (Note that the most 'Theocritean' of the Eclogues are the ones not assigned for this course.)
2. V. and the Alexandrian/Callimachean tradition. Note particularly Ecl. 6 and 10 in this respect: what do the poems show about how V. viewed the poetic tradition and his place in it?
3. V. and Cornelius Gallus. This is closely related to the previous approach, but is somewhat more frustrating. Ross's book (below) is in fact about this subject, but was written before the discovery of 90% of the extant poetry of Gallus (total: 10 verses, of which nine are in the new papyrus; the text is available in Courtney, Fragmentary Latin Poets)--which changes things somewhat. The real question is the role the figure 'Gallus' plays in Ecl. 6 and 10; from that, one can turn to the less answerable question of how 'Gallus' is related to the real Gallus.
4. V. and Rome. Ecl. 1 and 9 in particular deal with the land confiscations (and there have been many strange biographical interpretations, dating back to antiquity)--or at least with the relationship between the world of pastoral and the world of Rome. Who is the God of the First Eclogue? What is the role of "real" people in these poems? And, of course, there is the nasty problem of the Fourth Eclogue: who is the child? how serious is this poem? It needs to be looked at in connection with Horace, Epode 16, a closely parallel text in many respects.
5. V.'s Book. As is the case with Horace's Sermones, the Eclogues are a composed book, with at least one, and perhaps several, elaborate structures. The same question applies: what is the relationship between reading the book as a static pattern and reading it as a version of narrative? What is the relationship between the Book and the World?
6. Which brings one back to the first question: why pastoral?
Short, short bibliography:
a) Eclogues