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Preoccupation with good taste marks Montengon's novel as a creation of the late eighteenth century

Jorge de Montemayor never called his Siete Libros de la Diana a 'novela pastoril' nor indeed was the word novela applied by anyone in the sixteenth century to any works other than Italianate short stories. Nevertheless it seems clear that Montemayor was conscious of producing a new and even daring version of pastoral, by combining it with narrative in the tradition of the Italian novella. In this sense the term 'pastoral novel' is valid for La Diana, and attention to its hybrid nature provides a clue to understanding the work's enormous popularity in terms of continuations, adaptations and translations in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, as well as its importance in the history of the modern European novel.