Virgilio e Boccaccio in Arcadia

When Sannazaro decides to set his pastoral romance in Arcadia, the region is not yet a privileged vehicle of pastoral. He chooses it on the basis of the ambivalent vision of Arcadia offered by Boccaccio’s Ninfale d’Ameto and Genealogie deorum gentilium rather than Virgil’s work. For Boccaccio, Arcadia is a locus amoenus suitable for a quiet withdrawal from public life, but also a locus horribilis to be fled, a source of civilisation and, at the same time, a land of slyness and thieves