Hyperreality and utopianism from the pastoral mode : A literary-philosophical analysis of how literature contributes to the replacement of the metaphysics of reality with hyperreality, through an alternative interpretation of the pastoral mode as a n

In this study I investigate how the pastoral mode can transform into a network of simulacra based on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality. This is done through a three-step analysis developed specifically for this study, based on the components: Literature, Function and Reality. In the first step I formulate and establish a pastoral framework based on theories of the pastoral mode and analyses of poems, primarily by Theocritus and Virgil. In the second step of the analysis, I explore the relationship between the pastoral framework and utopianism, where an alternative interpretation reveals underlying utopian functions and I also identified its semiotic structure. In the final part of the analysis, I examine how the results from the previous steps can be understood and transformed into a network of simulacra by identifying how its semiotic structure changes through the application of Baudrillard’s theory of the sign’s transformation through four phases into pure simulacrum. In conclusion, I demonstrate that the pastoral mode can be understood as a network of simulacra that may have been part of a preliminary stage in the creation of hyperreality, which has replaced the metaphysics of reality through the transformation in its semiotic structure. I have chosen to call this preliminary stage protohyperreality.