Arcadia is a pastoral poem written around 1480 by Jacopo Sannazaro and published in 1504 in Naples. Sannazaro's Arcadia influenced the literature of the 16th and 17th centuries (e.g., Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Marguerite de Navarre, Jorge de Montemayor, Garcilaso de la Vega and John Milton).
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Jacopo Sannazaro (Italian pronunciation: [ˈjaːkopo sannadˈdzaːro]; 28 July 1458 – 6 August 1530) was an Italian poet, humanist, member and head of the Accademia Pontaniana from Naples.
He wrote easily in Latin, in Italian and in Neapolitan, but is best remembered for his humanist classic Arcadia, a masterwork that illustrated the possibilities of poetical prose in Italian, and instituted the theme of Arcadia, representing an idyllic land, in European literature. Sannazaro's elegant style was the inspiration for much courtly literature of the 16th century, including Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.