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Updated: May 21, 2025
Another of the outlying realms of pastoral is the mythological tale, more or less directly imitated from Ovid. The first to introduce it in vernacular literature was Boccaccio, who in his Ninfale fiesolano uses a pagan allegory to convey a favourite novella theme. The shepherd Affrico loves a nymph of Diana, and the tale ends by the goddess changing her faithless votary into a fountain.
The conception of love as a civilizing and humanizing power already underlay the sensuous stanzas of the Ninfale fiesolano, while the later part of the romance was not uninfluenced by recollections of the Divine Comedy . It is true that a modern mind will with difficulty be able to reconcile the amorous confessions of the nymphs with the characteristics of the virtues, but in Boccaccio's day the tradition of the Gesta Romanorum was still strong, and the age that mysticized Vergil, and moralized Ovid, was capable of much in the way of allegorical interpretation .
A graceful idyll in the same metre, Ninfale Fiesolano, was written later, probably at Naples in 1345. King Robert was then dead, but Boccaccio enjoyed the favour of Queen Joan, of somewhat doubtful memory, at whose instance he hints in one of his later letters that he wrote the Decameron.
This peculiarity, which we have already met with in Boccaccio's eclogues, and in his Ninfale fiesolano, was indeed one of the most persistent as it was one of the least admirable characteristics of pastoral composition. Francesco Sansovino, who edited the Ameto in 1545, discovered real personages underlying the characters of the romance.
The example was boldly set by Boccaccio, with his fanciful world of gods and shepherds who people the country round Florence in his 'Ninfale d'Ameto' and 'Ninfale Fiesolano. Both these poems were written in Italian.
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