Longus' Daphnis and Chloe. Literary Transmission and Reception

This essay contains a brief history of Longus' reception in literature from the re-discovery of the text in the Renaissance to modern times. Western Europe began to read Longus mostly in the 'artistic' translations of Jacques Amyot, Lorenzo Gambara, Angel Day, Annibal Caro, who did not usually confine themselves to a literal version of the Greek original, but inserted into the text much of their own work, inviting imitation within the genre: an immense number of pastoral romances inspired by or imitating Longus appeared since the middle of the sixteenth century throughout western Europe. After a temporary eclipse, which chronologically corresponds, in scholarship, with the severe judgement given by Huet (1670), Longus' vogue regained favour in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in a period of revival of pastoral fashion in every art. Meanwhile, Villoison’s masterful edition (1778) had the merit of conveying a new awareness of this novelist's significance also in classical scholarship. Among the authors mostly influenced by Longus there are: Rémy Belleau, Tasso, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Goethe, George Sand, Mishima.