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TheAmeto of Boccaccio also possesses considerable importance in literary history, being the first well-defined modern instance of an important genre, the pastoral romance, afterwards carried to perfection by Sannazaro and Montemayor; and also of a literary artifice, the interweaving of several stories to compose a whole. The stories are not very attractive, and the combination is not very well managed, but the idea was an important contribution to literature, and, though Longus is more likely to find emulators than Boccaccio, the pastoral romance still has a future before it. The tales are supposed to record the experiences of shepherdesses who personify the virtues, and that placed in the mouth of Fiammetta is certainly in some measure autobiographical.

More autobiographical still, and consequently nearer to the truth of nature, is the romance called after Fiammetta, the precursor of the modern psychological novel, although a germ that long remained unproductive in unkindly soil. Written, probably, about 1346, it is half-way in style between theFilocopo and theDecameron, and the plot is simplicity itself in comparison with the bewildering intricacy of the former. It is merely Fiammetta’s own detail of her unfortunate passion for a young Tuscan, and her lamentation for his inconstancy after his recall to his home by a stern father. The auto-biographical element is unquestionable, but it is extremely unlikely that Boccaccio would have accused himself of infidelity in the person of Pamfilo. It has been conjectured to be the work of some anonymous writer who took him as a hero; but had this been so, the fact would assuredly have come to light. It is more probable that it represents, not Fiammetta’s feelings, but his own, and that, to avoid gossip, or for artistic reasons, he inverted the situation and the characters. Fiammetta undoubtedly excites more interest than Pamfilo could have done, and her sufferings appear in a more tragic light as the penalty of her breach of conjugal fidelity.