ARCADIA. The 'Arcadia' of Jacopo Sannazaro (1456-1530) is the most celebrated of the Italian pastoral romances of the Renais sance. Composed between 1481 and 1486, it first appeared in a pirated edition at Venice in 1502, in an authorized print at Naples in 1504 (edited by Summonte), finally in the Aldine edition of Venice 1514. It is this text of Aldo Manuzio that has formed the basis of the numberless more recent edi tions of the work. A large variety of considerations have tended to give the 'Ar cadia' a greater eminence in literary history than for intrinsic value it would seem to de serve. It is the most considerable production of the Neapolitan school of literature in the 15th century, a group comprising Pietro Jacopo de Jennaro, Cantheo, Pietro Antonio Caracciolo and Giannantonio Petrucci. This school, aside from the Petrarchistic trends in Italian poetry, is important as showing in dic tion the curious linguistic hybridism that pre ceded the constitution of the national Italian language on a classic basis (imitation of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio). The (Arcadia,' in fact, has in its earlier forms a distinct Neapol itan coloring. But in successive redactions, Sannazaro made it conform more and more to the language and style of the Tuscan Boccac cio; and the triumphant classic purism of the 16th century came to recognize the 'Arcadia' as one of the supreme models of linguistic cor rectness and good taste. The Renaissance doc trine of 'limitation') likewise enthroned this romance of Sannazaro as the perfect model of the pastoral ((genre,' especially as regards the eclogue. The imitation of the 'Arcadia,' be ginning with Serafino dall' Aquila, extends in Italy through Castiglione, Tasso, Guarini and lesser men down to the end of the 18th century. Castiglione himself seems to have introduced the 'Arcadia' to the Spanish court. Its popu larity in Spain is attested by imitations by Garcilaso de la Vega, by Montemayor (Diana), by Cervantes (Galatea) and hosts of others.
In France the 'Arcadia inspired the (Bergerie) of Remy Belleau and to some extent also the work of Ronsard. For England we have the 'Shepherd's Kalendar' of Spenser and the (Ar cadia,' no less, of Philip Sydney. To be sure, in all these epigones of Sannazaro's work, it is not always easy to separate the influence of the (Arcadia' from that of its own sources. Sannazaro composed it directly on the model of Boccaccio (e.g., 'Ameto'), utilizing also Virgil, Ovid, Theocritus, Bion and Moschus. The later pastorals, moreover, borrowed largely from the Spanish romance.
The 'Arcadia' tells the story of an idyllic, unhappy love, to which legend assigns a bio graphical value for the poet. Sincerus (Sanna zaro) driven wandering by love, goes breathing the sighs of his melancholy spirit through the groves of Arcadia, inhabited by the most erudite, esthetic and delicately sensualistic shepherds imaginable. Sincerus is warned by an evil dream that his "nymph° is in danger; he returns to his home, to find her dead.
Around this tenuous plot is arranged a whole gallery of word-paintings, brilliantly colored and elaborated in detail. The work is suffused with tints of quintessential delicacy; we meet there only the softest murmurs, the tenderest emotions, the • most fainting Janguors; There is a constant tickling of the senses with stimuli attenuated to the point of vanishing, but calcu lated to arouse in souls properly "sublimated° greatest intensity, of emotional strain. Thus the 'Arcadia' expresses the of esthetic refinement held up before the court of Italy, and by the Italians passed on as the foundation of good manners to France and the rest of the world. However, such sublimity always totters on the brink of the ridiculous. There is a vein of possible humor underneath which alone can save such artificiality. The self-consciousness of this humor is the saving quality of Tasso's pastoral art; the lack of it constitutes the prevailing defect of the cadia' of Sannamiro.