La novela pastoril

With a concept sensu lato of any novelistic formula, Menéndez Pelayo undertook the study of the pastoral novel in his Origins of the Novel. This observation may seem like a truism, since the study is contained in a book with that title, and so nothing else should be expected. However, with regard to the adjectivity of the novel – and this is what I want and must refer to – Don Marcelino proceeded with a certain flexibility, which does not mean indefinition or an uncommitted eclectic stance, but rather , awareness of the dimension, the qualitative and quantitative value of bucolism in the European literary tradition and its gradual insertion into the narrative variety of the 16th century