Iacopo Sannazaro’s ‘Arcadia’ (1504) was the first pastoral novel in European literature and it has had an unparalleled impact. The list of writers outside Italy who were inspired by Sannazaro’s novel includes Garcilaso, Montemayor, Cervantes, Sidney, d’Urfé and Opitz, a list that can be extended to practitioners of the fine arts, music and beyond. The book depicts the experiences of Sincero, a Neopolitan nobleman who has been unlucky in love, living among the shepherds of Arcadia, and in his prosimetrum Sannazaro uses a vast array of quotations from the classic works of ancient and Italian literature which he admired.
Franiziska Merklin’s translation of ‘Arcadia’ contains an introduction, which interprets Sannazaro’s novel and traces the history of its reception, a commentary and an explanatory index of names.
The History of the Language and the History of the Nation