One day about the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the
fourteenth, when the Middle Ages still darkly curtained the Renaissance
from view, a “man of the Court”, or minstrel, of some Italian lord had
one of those inventive flashes which go to the making of literatures.
This “man of the Court” who was perhaps a minstrel or giullare in
little more than name—for his talent would be especially literary—knew
by heart the little archaic tales which make up the slender corpus of
the Cento Novelle Antiche, or Novellino. Often he told them or heard
them told in baronial halls, and in lordly places, in rough huts after
days of hunting, and in the encampments of battlefields. Before
audiences of seigneurs and knights, in the company of stately prelates,
and in the rollicking gatherings of dashing young donzelli, he had
narrated or heard narrated by humbler men of his craft these simple
stories, some of them redolent of the wisdom of ages, others piquant
with the flavour of his own times. Well he knew their effect, and could
choose one to suit his company and occasion. Thus for the entertainment
of graver and elderly lords he would select those of monkish or ascetic
origin, while when in the company of gay young cavalieri, he would not
hesitate to tell over some of the more libertine tales of his oral
anthology. And the beginnings of the new Italian tongue, liberating
itself from the secular thrall of its parent Latin, and having taken
shape in its Tuscan and Sicilian matrixes, sought an early literary
expression and found it in the work of our perhaps slightly pedantic
giullare who will in all probability remain for ever unknown to us.
That some such person existed is obvious, even if we cannot discover
his name, nor his place of birth, nor estate. He may indeed have been a
worldly type of monk rather than a “man of the court”, but the choice
of the novelle, included in the collection, would certainly seem rather
to point to the compiler being a man of the world rather than an
ascetic. As does the fact that the tales were not written in Latin, for
the tenacious Latin clung to the cloisters after it had died on the
tongues and pens of the lay world of those times. Our anthologist, who
was in fact a great deal more than an anthologist, had coadjutors and
rivals, successors and improvers, as the different manuscripts of the
Novellino prove, but the original compiler of the Cento Novelle
Antiche, as the work was previously called, was, one likes to believe,
a single individual rather than a group of giullari or ex-giullari at
the dependence of some medieval Medici. So the idea came to him of
grouping together in one manuscript, which maybe he gave for copying to
some Florentine monk, a selection of the knightly, moral, Biblical,
classical, and popular tales which were most in vogue in his epoch.
They were stories which had stood the test of time—some of them the
test of successive civilizations—and had met the full-throated approval
of numerous courts from Provence to Sicily, from Parma to Rome.
Hitherto they had lived only on the lips of the Court story-tellers and
wandering minstrels who narrated them. The tales which make up the
Novellino were, for the most part, “taught”, as we learn from our text
by one giullare or story-teller to another. And each man added or
altered them according to his wit and company. That the professional
story-tellers played tricks with the tales in vogue and added details
and colour of their own on occasion, we may well presume from Novella
LXXXIX, where a “man of the Court” is reminded that he is spinning out
his story at too great a length by one of the yawning company. The
collection here printed under the title of Il Novellino, most of which
tales appear in the original edition of the Cento Novelle Antiche, by
Gualteruzzi, formed part of a vast repertory of similar stories,
legends and anecdotes which were bandied about from province to
province, from country even to country, and closed full lived medieval
days of hunting and of battle.
Perhaps it was after some especially successful night when our unknown
compiler had won the approval of a generous signore for his tales, and
carried off a purse filled with a few gold coins to his lonely room,
that the idea came to him of framing the oral stories in a literary
form. He had probably no notion that he was making literature, or
founding one of the purest early classics of the young Italian tongue
which the wit of the people had shaped out of the mother Latin. For him
it was a matter of convenience and utility, though the urge to give a
literary shape to the spreading idiom was in the air, deriving as an
impellent necessity from the propagation of the spoken word which was
widespread in Tuscany and vigorous elsewhere though in dialect forms.
The first literary stirrings of the Italian conscience were in the air,
and writers brought up on Latin chronicles and used to the mixed French
and Italian of works like the Entrée en Espagne of Nicola da Padua were
anxious to try their hands on the wonderful virgin material within
their reach. We may reflect in passing what a marvellous opportunity it
was for poets and story-tellers, although they did not recognize it as
such—to find themselves in the privileged position of having a virgin
language at their command, not debased by the ready-made phrase, the
trite mechanical expression. With a new language coming into being,
nothing or almost nothing is conventionalized. The idea runs straight
from the dynamic thought to the natural phrase. There are no ready-made
channels to absorb the spontaneity, convenient and inevitable as such
moulds afterwards become.
So our “man of the Court” dreamed upon his great idea, developed it,
thought it over, took counsel maybe of some tale-loving signore and set
to work. We may, I think, fairly argue that it was some professional
teller of tales, some giullare of more than average education rather
than any monk or ascetic who wrote the first manuscript of the Hundred
Old Tales, and this for the extremely free, not to say bawdy character
of three or four of them. (These latter have not been translated.)
Moreover, the curious and often ridiculous errors in geography,
history, chronology and physics which we find in the Novellino is
surely proof that the person who compiled it was no great scholar or
man of learning. The mistakes which appear in it could hardly have been
perpetrated by a learned monk well read in history and the classics.
Again, Latin was still the language of science and such scholarship as
existed then. The times were rude in a certain sense, though perhaps
less rude than is generally imagined, but some of the errors to be
found in the tales are so gross and absurd that they could not have
been committed to a manuscript by anyone of real learning. Which gives
us ground for believing that the original anthologist was of the
minstrel class, a giullare of degree and some education, with literary
yearnings, stimulated perhaps by the exercises of his French and
Provençal colleagues in the arts of story-telling and song.
Italian critics and writers generally on the subject of early Italian
literature are by no means agreed as to the origins of the tales which
make up the Cento Novelle. It was during the latter half of the
thirteenth century, however, that the new tongue began to make headway
against the obstinacy of the Latin, but it is only towards the end of
the thirteenth century that original works in Italian prose appeared.
Before the thirteenth century practically no Italian literature
existed. Italian writers had written in Latin, in French, and in a kind
of mixed French and Italian. We have the Latin chronicles of the IXth,
Xth, XIth, and XIIth centuries which contain classical and mythological
allusions. Guido delle Colonne wrote his Trojan poem in Latin. In the
Bovo d’Antona, the Venetian dialect makes itself clearly felt. It was
from about the year 1250 that the national literature developed. In the
North of Italy, the poems of Giacomino da Verona and Bonvecino da Riva,
which were religious in character, showed traces of the movement which
prepared the way for the instrument that was to serve Dante and
Boccaccio. In the South of Italy, and in Sicily especially, at the
Sicilian court, there arose a school of poets who specialised in love
songs which were largely imitations of Provençal rhymers. To this
Siculo-Provençal school belonged Pier delle Vigne, Inghilfredi, Jacopo
d’Aquino and Rugieri Pugliese. The south of the Italian continent with
the exception of Naples and some monasteries like Salerno, was steeped
in ignorance, and rough dialects grew out of the Greco-Latin soil with
nothing literary about them. Frederick II himself, who ruled his
Sicilian court, was a poet of sorts himself, though his productions
were imitative and unoriginal like most of the members of the Sicilian
school. As to what is exactly the oldest prose writing in the Italian
language opinions differ, but certainly the Composizione del Mondo by
Ristoro d’Arezzo (a Tuscan) who lived about the middle of the
thirteenth century, is one of the oldest, if not the oldest. Matteo
Spinelli da Giovenazzo, too, may lay claim to be one of the very
earliest writers in the Tuscan dialect, which afterwards, and with
great rapidity, developed into the Italian language. Another name that
may be mentioned is that of Ricordano Malespina.
The French fabliaux, and the works of the French and Provençal singers
and makers of contes certainly inspired writings like the Novellino and
the few other contemporary works of a similar character. The former
reached a far higher degree of art than they ever attained to in Italy.
To the extensive works in thousands of lines which the other romance
languages can show, Italy can only put forward the bare skeleton tales
of the Novellino, the Conti dei Antichi Cavalieri, the Conti Morali del
Anonimo Senese. Earlier works there were in Latin, such as the famous
Gesta Romanorum and the Disciplina Clericalis. Several of the tales
which appear in the Novellino also figure in Disciplina Clericalis and
in the Gesta, as we shall see.
To all the poetry of the French and Provençal bards of the Middle Ages
Italy has nothing to oppose. Cantastorie or minstrels there were, but
the Italian giullare was considerably lower in the hierarchy of song
than his French or Provençal brothers. In Italy such poems or songs
lacked the profound impress of the people’s spirit. No memory of these
Italian songs has remained, though they must have existed, and perhaps
in plenty, but the versifiers of the period were plebian and lowly.
They lacked the protection of important courts. While France, Spain and
Germany can show a rich epic popular poetry, Italy can only boast a few
hundred novelle in prose.
The tale or novella was a literary product especially pleasing to the
Middle Ages, which was, in the matter of culture, an infantile age. The
period seems to have almost a childish affection for the marvellous
tale. Learning and intellectual sophistication of any kind was in the
hands of a few, was almost a kind of vested interest in which not only
the common people, but even the lords and knights themselves had no
interest or claim. This was especially the case in Italy, where no
vehicle existed for its propagation until the end of the thirteenth
century. Therefore to simple minds, unused to the mysteries of
literature, save those written in a hermetic and pompous tongue fast
disappearing from common use, the tale was a spiritual refreshment
aptly suited to the time. In England, too, we see examples of Latin
tales as in the De Naturis Rerum of Neckham.
But if Italian culture was backward at this time, or non-existent save
in Latin forms, it grew very quickly, and from its plebian sources
there came into being the new art of Boccaccio. For though the language
was new, the Italians were by no means a new people. They had behind
them a long uninterrupted literary tradition from which they could with
difficulty withdraw themselves. There was even a similarity of spirit
between those who clung to the old traditions and wrote in Latin, and
the people seeking to express themselves in their young language. The
two literatures had a great deal of the same spirit and character. The
early Italian prose developed to a great extent along the lines of the
earlier chroniclers who wrote in medieval Latin. Nor could it very well
be otherwise, for even a new literature of a new tongue requires
models, and where should the new nationalist scribes turn for models
save to the Latin writings of their own countrymen? It is not too much
to say that Italian grew quickly because of its Latin traditions. It is
astonishing to think how quickly it did grow, from the simple
beginnings of the Cento Novelle to Boccaccio. In less than one hundred
years Dante is reached. This rapid growth evidently depended on the
fact that Italian was a continuation of Middle-Age Latin. In its spoken
form, it had been in use for some time, and it merely required a
certain amount of independence and belief in the popular idiom to turn
it to literary uses.
In the tales which make up the Novellino, we can see how near the form
is to the spoken language, especially in those tales which are of
contemporary and local origin. The compiler did little more than put
into simple Tuscan prose tales that for the most part were well known
in oral tradition. When I come to examine the tales individually, we
shall see which came from the classics, which from Oriental sources,
which from Provence and which were the product of local wit.
It is alleged in some quarters that the Novellino or the Cento Novelle
Antiche was not the work of a single compiler. This thesis is supported
by arguments which point out the diversity of style and colour in the
tales. It seems to me that it may also be argued from this that, as
indisputably the stories derive from many stories, such as Provence,
the Bible, the Greek and Latin classics, and the tales of the moral and
ascetic writers, such a variety of style and colour is only to be
expected. If one prefers the theory of single authorship—an authorship
of course which is limited as the subject matter of the tales was
common property—one can find just as many arguments for it as the
upholders of the plural authorship theory can lay against it. There are
those who deny the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey to one poet. One
cannot pretend to settle a question which still perplexes Italian
critics of their own early literature. One may, however, refer briefly
to some of the best accredited opinion on the subject.
Francesco Costerò, who believes the tales to be written by several
hands, writes in his preface to a popular edition of the Novellino:
“Nobody has yet, in spite of all the efforts of the learned, arrived at
determining for certain the time or authorship of the Novellino. This
is very natural, in the case of a work which was obviously written by
several people and gathered in volume with time. In the Novellino,
Saladin is spoken of, and we know that he died in 1193, during a war
with the Christians of the Third Crusade. The book also makes reference
to the Cavaliere Alardo di Valleri, who contributed to the victory of
Charles d’Anjou at the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268. From one date to
the other there pass some seventy-five years, whence we should have to
admit that the author was more than a hundred years old if he were one
and the same person. Further, we must take account of the style of the
book”. This argument of Costerò does not seem very difficult to answer.
Some people are of the opinion that Brunetto Latini was the author of
some of the tales and Professor Carbone writes that: “Latini added some
of the finest flowers of the collection and the two narratives of
Papirius and the Emperor Trajan are to be found with slight differences
in the Cento Novelle and in Fiore di Filosofi e di molti Savi”.
To give an idea of the close similarity that exists between the two
versions of the Trajan tale, I give a translation of both versions and
place them side by side. The Trajan story is No. LXIX of the present
collection. The version to be found in the Fiore di Filosofi runs:
Trajan was a very just emperor. Having one day mounted his horse to
enter into battle with his cavalry, a widow woman came before him,
and taking hold of his foot, begged him very earnestly and asked
him that he should do justice on those who had wrongfully killed
her son, a most upright lad. The Emperor spoke to her and said: I
will give you satisfaction on my return....
The version in the Novellino runs:
The Emperor Trajan was a most just lord. Going one day with his
host of cavalry against his enemies, a widow woman came before him,
and taking hold of his stirrup, said: Sire, render me justice
against those who have wrongfully killed my son. And the Emperor
answered: I will give you satisfaction when I return.
As we see, the versions are almost identical, and the similarity
continues in about the same degree throughout the two versions of the
same tale.
The opinion has been put forward that Francesco da Barberino had a hand
in the shaping of the final collection of tales. This theory was
advanced by Federigo Ubaldini in 1640. Adolfo Ancona, certainly one of
the weightiest authorities on early Italian literature, is of the
opinion that the Novellino was the work of one man. The matter is
complicated by the existence of more than one manuscript.
The first edition of the tales was printed in Bologna in 1525 by Carlo
Gualteruzzi of Fano under the title Le Ciento Novelle antike. In 1572,
there appeared in Florence the Libro di Novelle et di bel Parlar
Gentile, under the editorship of Monsignor Vicenzo Borghini. This
latter edition differs considerably from the Gualteruzzian version,
contains tales which do not appear in the earlier version and omits
others contained therein. The discussions concerning the two versions
soon began. But the authenticity of the Gualteruzzian version is now
generally accepted, though the matter can by no means be considered as
finally settled. Borghini in his edition seems to have sought to remove
from the text all the moral and ascetic tales or those deriving from
monkish or ecclesiastical sources. According to D’Ancona, the version
of Borghini is an altered and much edited one, while the original
edition of Gualteruzzi corresponds with the different codexes of the
work, except in the case of the Codex Panciatichianus Palatinus, which
has recently come in for accurate examination at the hands of Professor
Sicardi, who has written a long essay prefacing his edition of the
Novellino. Sicardi, it may be mentioned, holds by the theory of the
plural authorship of the tales. A curious fact in connection with the
early editions of the Hundred Old Tales is that it has been alleged
that an earlier edition than that of Gualteruzzi published in Bologna
in 1525 exists in England. It is supposed to have been offered for sale
by a London dealer in first editions, and to have passed into private
hands. I have not been able to verify the truth of the existence or not
of this alleged early edition.
The manuscripts of the Cento Novelle Antiche are eight in number, and
seven of them correspond with the editio princeps of Gualteruzzi. Only
one, the Codex Panciatichianus, discovered by Wesselofsky, and
published by Biagi in 1880, differs materially, and contains some
thirty tales and proverbs which do not appear in either of the two
principal editions of Gualteruzzi or Borghini.
The eight codexes are: the Codex Marciana, which is in Venice; the
Vatican manuscript; while the other six are in Florence. Of these, one
is in the Laurentian library, three are in the Palatine section of the
National Library, while the remaining manuscripts are to be found in
the Magliabechiana section of the same institute.
The tales contained in the Novellino divide themselves into sections.
We have the Biblical stories founded on occurrences related in the Old
Testament, and generally containing inaccuracies and alterations in the
names and places of the characters referred to. This in itself, as may
also be argued in the case of some of the tales deriving from the
Greco-Roman sources, would seem to prove the popular origin of the
collection. The unknown compiler took the oral story as he found it,
even if it contained facts chronologically or historically at variance
with the Biblical narrative. We have an instance of this in story
number IV of the present collection, where, instead of the prophet Gad
giving David the choice of punishments, an angel is made to appear and
tell David that he has sinned. Again, in Novella XII, the compiler has
mixed up the names of Joab and Aminadab, while in Novella XXXVI, the
account of the second half of the tale is not according to the Biblical
narration.
Another portion of the stories derive from French and Provençal sources
and the Arthurian cycle is drawn on more than once. The story of how
“The Lady of Shalot died for love of Lancelot of the Lake”, which is
one of the most beautiful of the entire collection, is an instance in
point. The Novelle telling of the Lady Iseult and Tristan of Lyonesse,
and the short one numbered XLV are also from the Arthurian romance. Of
probable Provençal origin are the tales concerning the Young King and
William of Borganda, the tale of Messer Imberal del Balzo, and perhaps
the two tales regarding Richard Cœur de Lion, as well as the story on
the Doctor of Toulouse, that about Charles D’Anjou and “What happened
at the Court of Puys in Provence”. Many of the tales are taken from
French originals, such as those dealing with the Astrologers of France,
with Messer Roberto di Ariminimonte (LXII), while it is possible that
the stories dealing with the young King and Richard Cœur de Lion came
from the French and not the Provençal. The novelle deriving from the
knightly romances may also very well be of French origin.
Another section of the tales would appear to have their origins in the
classics, and among these are the stories dealing with Trajan, Cato,
Seneca, Socrates, Hector and Troy, Narcissus, Hercules, Aristotle and
others.
A number are of oriental origin. Among these may be mentioned the
novella treating of Prester John, of “the Greek kept in prison”, “How a
jongleur lamented before Alexander”, “God and the Minstrel” and the
last one in the book about the Old Man of the Mountain.
As the reader will see, the stories in this collection, which represent
what is the oldest or almost the oldest work in prose in the Italian
language, and the first book of stories in that tongue, have a very
special and characteristic style of their own. Their language is the
language of the beginnings of a culture, simple to the point of
bareness, full of action, wisdom and wit. The narratives are the
narratives of a man unused to word-spinning and still a mediæval person
of action, a trifle afraid of the mystery of the written word, though
probably almost a pedant in comparison with the illiterate world of his
time. The language of the tales calls to mind very obviously the style
of the Bible, or of the early Hellenic poems, though it is ruder than
either. The very simplicity which is one of the charms of the narrative
has its drawbacks or rather surprises, especially to modern minds
accustomed to a more flexible and more elastic syntax. The personal
pronouns have a curious way of getting mixed up in the Novellino. One
feels that the story-teller has a perfect, even childish confidence in
the reader’s interest, and as a matter of fact, the tales are so short
and easily grasped that the doubt as to who is the particular “he” or
“she” or “they” referred to is little more than a pedantic one. I have
only altered these peculiarities of the prose where it has seemed
necessary in order to allow the meaning to come through clearly, for
certainly a great deal of the quality and charm of the book lies in its
quaint style. To smooth this out overmuch, would certainly destroy the
vigour of the original. Many of the tales, as I have said elsewhere,
are common to many nations, and it is largely due to the strong if
abrupt style of the narratives that they give us such a sharp sense of
the period to which they belong.
To read the tales in the present collection provides a remarkable
contrast with modern prose, which can never seem to say enough. The
compiler or author, if so we may call him, of the Hundred Old Tales,
eschews all psychology the meaning of which word he was ignorant of,
and abstains from comment unless it be in the nature of moral comment.
This latter, of course, comes from the older tradition of Latin tales
to which books like the Gesta Romanorum and Disciplina Clericalis
belong. But in this case, the moral is pointed out out of respect to
the older tradition, from which the author could not quite shake
himself free, writing, though he was, in a new idiom. These moralisings
which conclude some of the tales, or are allowed to be understood, are
more a tribute to the moral than the literary traditions of the times.
The beauty and dramatic effect of some of the tales is extraordinary.
The version given of the Lady of Shalot and how she died for love of
Lancelot is exquisite in its purity and tenderness. It is quite a
little masterpiece of literature.
“The sail-less vessel was put into the sea with the woman, and the
sea took it to Camelot, and drifted it to the shore. A cry passed
through the court. The knights and barons came down from the
palaces, and noble King Arthur came too, and marvelled mightily
that the boat was there with no guide. The king stepped on to it
and saw the damsel and the furnishings. He had the satchel opened
and the letter was found. He ordered that it should be read, and it
ran: ‘To all the Knights of the Round Table this lady of Shalott
sends greetings as to the gentlest folk in the world. And if you
would know why I have come to this end, it is for the finest knight
in the world and the most villainous, that is my Lord Sir Lancelot
of the Lake, whom I did not know how to beg that he should have
pity on me. So I died for loving well as you can see’.”
It would be hard to surpass the pure simplicity of this even in verse.
The language moves directly from fact to the written word. There is no
hint of conscious colouring, no attempt to heighten the effect by a
single adjective. Adjectives indeed are extremely rare in the
Novellino, as in all good simple prose for the matter of that. The
writer rarely departs from “very beautiful” or “most gentle” or “very
rich”. As a rule, the tales are almost adjectiveless, and never are
adjectives used to round out an effect or disguise an impoverished
period. The rhythm of the tales, almost monotonous perhaps, yet
wonderfully strong, moves surely from subject to predicate with the
least possible adornment. Adornment, in fact, is not the word to use in
this connection, for as such it does not exist. Such adjectival or
adverbial phrases as are used are such as are only strictly demanded by
the accompanying nouns or verbs. This, of course, is one of the
characteristics of good literature in all ages, and especially is to be
found in early classic prose.
A typical story of the Middle Ages is the dramatic, macabre tale of the
knight who was charged with the custody of a hanged man, and found a
substitute for the body which had been taken away by the dead man’s
friends in the corpse of the husband of a woman to whom the knight
makes love. The love scene which takes place at night by the grave-side
of the woman’s husband whom she is desperately mourning is grim and
picturesque indeed. We have to go to our own Border and Scotch Ballads
to find anything similar. Though the tale is of ancient origin, and is
to be found in Petronius, it has all the characteristics of awe, swift
passion, gloom and mockery which we associate with the so-called dark
ages. The little story outlines a drama of great gloom and power in a
few rapid touches. The whole thing is told in some three or four
hundred words, but the content is packed with action, and not a word is
wasted in ornament or comment. If we take two or three of the lines of
the tale individually, we see how rich in action and picturesqueness
they are, though a chaster and more ascetic prose could hardly be used.
“Do as I say,” says the knight at the graveside; “Take me to husband,
for I have no wife, and save my life, for I am in danger.... Show me
how I may escape if you can, and I will be your husband and maintain
you honourably. Then the woman, hearing this, fell in love with the
knight.... She ceased her plaint, and helped him to draw her husband
from his grave....” We may note how in the next sentence the writer
passes quickly over what has happened on the journey to the scaffold,
discarding it as undramatic, for the same sentence goes on at once “...
and assisted him to hang him by the neck, dead as he was”.
A modern story-teller would have filled several pages describing the
lugubrious procession in the heart of the night from grave-yard to
scaffold, and have described at length the feelings of the knight and
the woman, with ample reflections on feminine nature; while the stars,
the countryside, black cypresses, notes of melancholy owls, the
sentinels at the city gates would all have been usefully dragged in to
impress the reader.
The Middle Ages was childish perhaps in its love of the marvellous and
marvellous stories, but the audiences of the old giullari and jongleurs
certainly did not lack imagination. In this they were like children who
are rich in it, and to whom a bare swift tale with sharply outlined
facts is dearer than all the considerations and artifices with which a
clever tale-teller may embellish it.
If it is not correct to state that people to-day have less imagination
than folk in the Middle Ages, it is very likely true that as they have
so many more calls on it, it easily becomes tired and loses in
elasticity. Those with lively imaginations like to add a good deal
themselves to a story that is told them, and such was the case with the
listeners to the stories given in this collection. They would probably
have resented the guillare overloading his narratives with subsidiary
facts, descriptions and artificial holding of the interest. They could
do that kind of thing very well themselves. In fact, we have internal
evidence from the Novellino itself that lengthy stories were not to the
taste of the listeners of those times. In Novella No. LXXXIX, we read
of a giullare “who began a story that never ended”. One of the hearers
interrupts the story-teller, and assures him that the person “who
taught him the tale did not teach him all of it”. The giullare ask why
and is answered: “Because he did not teach you the end”.
Some writers have put forward the theory that the stories contained in
the Cento Novelle Antiche were only the synopses of longer stories, the
index, so to speak of a much larger book that has been lost. But it
seems to me that for the considerations before mentioned this is not
the case. The novella in its infancy was always a brief narration, and
even when we come to Boccaccio and his wider manipulation of material,
the tales even then are not long as we judge the length of stories
nowadays.
Certainly the modern man who lives a much less physical existence than
his forbears, and has perforce to use his imagination and other
intellectual faculties to a far greater extent than did the elder folk,
requires his stories completely filled in so that they leave him little
work to do. The Tired Business Man who takes the place of the bold
baron and the fat bourgeois of the old days exacts from his modern
jongleurs that they give him the least possible intellectual fatigue.
A number of the tales seem to belong especially to the period, and
differentiate themselves from the older ones in the collection where
the monkish and Latin flavour clings still through the freer prose of
the new idiom. Many of them have quite a Boccaccio touch, and already
we seem to hear the round jovial laugh, the sensual yet humanistic
mockery of the great Florentine. Among these we may mention the story
of the Woman and the Pear-tree, which is not to be found in the
original Gualteruzzi edition of 1525, but comes from the Panciatichiano
MS. The picture of the two lovers up in the branches of the pear-tree,
while the blind husband clasps the trunk of the tree below is worthy of
the author of the Decameron. The ending of the story, however, seems to
be more in keeping with the period.
The curious dialogue between God and Saint Peter, blasphemous almost at
first sight and yet innocent in its curious naivete and simplicity, is
the kind of thing we find in our period. It is on a par with that other
extraordinary story of God and the minstrel who went partners together,
which is obviously an old and favourite tale and much in the style of
the duecento. Borghini left it out of his edition, perhaps thinking it
was offensive to religious sentiment.
Boccaccian is Novella No. XLIX, the story of the Physician of Toulouse,
though the tale would appear to come from the French. So too is the
story about the parish priest Porcellino, whose name is certainly
chosen to give further point to the tale. In the same category comes
Novella LXII, the tale of Messer Robert of Burgundy. The story in fact
appears in the Decameron.
Many of the narratives have quite a different character to this rich
mirthful mockery. Tales like that relating to Prester John, to the wise
Greek whom a king kept in prison, the “Argument and Sentence that were
given in Alexandria”, Antigonus and Alexander, the Land Steward who
plucked out his own eye, belong to another epoch altogether and form
part of the monkish and ascetic heredity of the Novellino.
A few (four or five) of the stories are frankly indecent, and are
always expurgated from popular editions of the work in Italy, a course
which I have followed here. Two or three of the present collection are
also a trifle free, but I have decided to leave them in their place,
with a few unimportant excisions and alterations.
Another outstanding feature of the stories is the number of them which
tell of smart sayings, clever retorts and elegant ripostes. Evidently a
great deal was thought of such kind of quick-wittedness in the days of
the duecento. The compiler in the Proem to the book lists his “fair
courtesies and fine replies, valiant actions and noble gifts”, though
there are a number of tales dealing with snubbing or sarcastic replies,
which do not seem to be included in the category outlined in the Proem.
There is a certain curious childishness in the almost awed admiration
which the compiler seems to feel for anyone who makes a witty retort,
or snubs an opponent neatly. It is part of the intellectual simplicity
of the time. Thus we have the answer of the pilgrim to the Emperor in
Tale LXXXVI, the answer of the man who went to confess himself to the
priest, the clever trick of the man who lent money to the student in
the “Man of the Marches who went to study at Bologna”.
Great importance, too, is laid on the knightly virtues of kindliness,
courtesy and generosity; Knights were expected to be brave, but also
gentle, in the sense which the word has taken on when allied with the
noun and transformed into our modern gentleman. This common vocable of
our daily life is a direct inheritance from the times of chivalry, and
retains in its best meaning a great deal of the old significance.
In the language of the stories there is a good deal of Latin grace,
order and sense of measure due to the old tradition. For the tales in
this collection passed in many cases from their original Latin forms to
the mouths of the people, taking on in the process a new originality,
character and colour before they were written again in the virgin prose
of Tuscany.
That these little tales can please modern readers there is good reason
to believe, for they have been tested by time and worn smooth by
repetition of all useless angles or unnecessary detail. There is in
them as their especial merit great humanity, passion, drama, and often
a wisdom so old and mysterious that it seems to reach back through half
a dozen civilizations to the very heart and mind of early man.
And so I close this note of introduction and open the way for the tales
themselves “for the use and delight of such as know them not and fain
would know” as the compiler says.