The essay collections included in the book "The Pastoral Palimpsests" examine nine cases of the reception of Theocritus and Virgil, covering a period of 2000 years and a variety of themes.

Marco Fantuzzi analyzes the literary and metapragmatic significance of pastoral pride in the pseudo-Theocritean Eclogue 20. Richard Hunter connects the linguistic significance of a pastoral locus amoenus found in Aesop's Life. Thomas Hubbard examines the place of the piscatory eclogues in the poetic career of Jacopo Sannazaro. Philip Hardie analyzes the imitation of Virgil's career in John Milton's Epitaphium Damonis. Annabel Patterson investigates the complexly hidden debt of William Wordsworth to Virgil's eclogues.

Michael Paschalis identifies the relationships of Thomas Hardy's works with Virgil's Eclogues and the Aeneid. Theodore Ziolkowski presents the reactions to Virgil's Eclogue 1 in 20th-century literature. Fiona Cox reveals the ever-present influence of Virgil's pastoral Eclogues in Michel Butor's Mobile. Finally, Richard Thomas analyzes the aesthetics of pastoral melancholy in Virgil, the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti, and the songs of Bob Dylan.

- Michael Paschalis, "Introduction"
- Marco Fantuzzi, "The Importance of Being boukolos: ps.-Theocr. 20"
- Richard Hunter, "Isis and the Language of Aesop"
- Thomas Hubbard, "Exile from Arcadia: Sannazaro’s Piscatory Eclogues"
- Philip Hardie, "Milton’s Epitaphium Damonis and the Virgilian Career"
- Annabel Patterson, "Too much Virgil? Too much talk? Wordsworth’s Anxiety of Influence"
- Michael Paschalis, "Thomas Hardy and Virgil"
- Theodore Ziolkowski, "Twentieth-century Variations on Eclogue 1"
- Fiona Cox, "Night Falls on America: Virgilian Pastoral in Michel Butor’s Mobile"
- Richard F. Thomas, "Shadows are Falling: Virgil, Radnoti, and Dylan, and the Aesthetics of Pastoral Melancholy"