Novel
The Diana
Los siete libros de la Diana
Jorge de Montemayor · 1559
Opening lines
Baxaua delas montañas de Leon el oluidado Syreno, a quiẽ amor la fortuna, el tiempo tratauan de manera q̃ del menor mal q̃ en tan triſte vida padecia, no ſe eſperaua menos q̃ perdella.
Down from the mountains of León came the forgotten Sireno, whom love, fortune and time treated in such a way that from the least ill he suffered in so sad a life he expected nothing less than to lose it.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
The shepherd Sireno loved Diana, who loved him too; called away from their village, he learns that in his absence she has married another shepherd, Delio. Returning a year later, he meets Silvano, his former rival, also rejected. Other shepherds and shepherdesses each tell of their thwarted love, among them Felismena, a young woman disguised as a shepherdess, who saves them from an attack by wild men. All decide to go to the sorceress Felicia, who is said to know how to heal their sorrows.
Context
Printed in Valencia and Milan around 1559, the book is the first pastoral novel written in Castilian. It follows Sannazaro's Arcadia, whose mixture of prose and verse it takes up, and borrows from the Dialoghi d'amore of Leone Ebreo. The Valladolid edition of 1561 inserts into it a short Moorish tale, the Abencerraje. Two sequels appeared in 1564, by Alonso Pérez and by Gaspar Gil Polo, and the book was soon translated into French, English and German; Shakespeare drew from the story of Felismena a plot of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Who it is for
A novel in seven books, in prose mixed with verse, in which the stories of several couples interlock.
Prizes and reception
Reissued seventeen times and continued twice in the sixteenth century; the Real Academia Española published the critical edition in 2025.