ITALY. The pastoral of the Renaissance did not spring from Vergil alone. To it contributed the pastourelles, love songs with a rustic set ting. which were cultivated in various countries of Southern Europe in the thirteenth century. They especially flourished in Provence. as early as the twelfth century, whence they were largely diffused. They were in no way connected with Vergil, but they seem to have had their source in folk-song. In the fourteenth century the two streams of influence—the native and the classic —united to form the modern pastoral. The Ver gilian revival first took the form of allegories. in which the learned addressed Latin epistles to one another under pastoral names. Eelop-,nes of this kind passed between Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio, professor of Latin at Bologna (about 1320). Dante figure: as Tityrus and his friend as Mopsus. Petrarch (1304-74) also com posed a pastoral in twelve eclogues. in which he worked out an elaborate allegory. Dante and Petrareh thus mark the reappearance of Vergil as a literary force. Boccaccio (1313-75) blends the ancient and the indigenous pastoral. He wrote Latin eclogues much in the manner of his great compatriots. His Ameto (1342) is the first pastoral romance in the vernacular. He took as his model the song-fahle in which prose is em ployed for the narrative and verse for the expres sion of the feelings. Under the names Caleone
and Fiammetta Bocenecin veiled his passion for Maria. natural daughter of King Robert of Naples. The Anteto, with its disguised personal history and cross-loves, is the prototype of the later Italian pastoral romances, of a fa mous specimen is the Arcadia (1504) by .Jacopo Sannazaro. Another aspect of the pastoral, which indeed is found in Petrarch, was rendered by :Mantuan td. 1516). His rustics were made a medium for fierce satire on women, the ( ourt. and the Church. Attention has already been called to the dramatic element in the pastoral as early as Theocritus. When the popularity of the mediaeval mystery play began to wane, the pas toral drama, easily expanded from the eclogue, was one of the forms that took its place. Even in Boceaccio's Ninfale Fiesolano the pastoral be gins to assume a dramatic turn. But the first distinctive pastoral drama is the Orfro of Po liziano, a sort of opera given at .lantila in 1471. It is founded on the story of Orpheus and Eury dice. During the next century many similar pastorals were produced at the Italian courts. By far the best of them is the Aminia of Tasso, performed at Ferrara in 1573. Equally well known in its own time was the Pastor Fido of Guarini (1590).