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The
Development of the Renaissance Novella It is difficult to come to
an exact definition of the Renaissance novella
(plural -- novelle) because of the
rapid development of prose fiction in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The
novella is defined as a short, prose
narrative, usually realistic and often satiric in tone. Novella
is an Italian word deriving from the feminine form of the word for new. The quality of newness in the novella is, perhaps, best associated
with the subject matter of the stories -- novelle
are based on current local events -- with a viewpoint that ranges from amorous
to humorous and satirical to political or moral. The characters in a novella
are placed in a realistic setting, complete with the rhythms of everyday life
and conversation. In counterpoint to
medieval romances that present an idealized world peopled with noble characters
in grand adventures, novelle narrate
common incidents in the lives of ordinary townspeople. These incidents become
uncommon as they are flavored with exaggeration and caricature, sometimes
stretching the limits of the imagination. Scholars generally agree
that the genre of the novella originated
in thirteenth-century Italy as a brief, well-structured prose narrative. The genre includes stories of action,
experience, brief anecdotes, and accounts of clever sayings with plots of
amorous intrigue, clerical corruption and clever tricks. Novelle
were often gathered together in collections, using a frame tale to unify
the stories with a common theme. While
the teller of a novella may claim a
moral intention for the story, the underlying purpose of the Renaissance novella is to entertain. The moral
intent claimed by some authors or narrators of Renaissance novelle is most often connected to the frame that encloses the
collection of novelle. Origins of the
Novella Short narratives originate in the
beginnings of mankind -- the impulse to tell a story must be one of the
earliest of human impulses. The ancient
civilizations of the Middle East and Egypt recorded short narratives, heroic
and didactic, in both prose and poetry as early as the Second Millennium
BC. Greek, Roman, Hebrew and Indian
cultures all contributed to the growing body of ancient fictional prose
narratives. These usually didactic
stories were told to idealize certain behaviors, to teach moral attitudes, and
to illustrate the rewards for good choices, the punishments for bad ones. In the European Middle Ages, short tales came from a
variety of sources to fill a growing hunger for enlightenment and entertainment. The sagas of Scandinavia and Iceland
recorded the rough founding of a new society in a barren landscape. Celtic tales reveled in the imaginative
romance and magic. Moral exempla, in the form of saints' lives
and tales of martyrs, were told to model behavior for uneducated or newly
converted Christians. And amongst the
common folk, a new kind of tale arose -- one grounded in the incidents of
everyday lives, preferring humor and common sense and sensuality to idealism. The fabliau,
a short metrical tale, satirized marriage, women and the clergy. Vivid detail and realistic observation
enhanced the plot, usually centered on an adulterous triangle, comic and often
bawdy. The Renaissance novella drew inspiration from all of these sources, but was most specifically
grounded in two: tales from the Orient and Christian exempla. The Oriental tales
had been collected and collated in frame tale collections by Arabic
storytellers and diffused in Greek, Latin and Hebrew translations well known
throughout Europe by the Twelfth Century.
Such widely known Oriental texts as the Panchatantra and The Thousand
and One Nights offered models for Renaissance authors. The Panchatantra,
a collection of tales that originated in India as early as the Second Century
BC, were translated from Sanskrit into Arabic in the Eighth Century. The outer frame for the tales probably was
crafted in the Middle East and then translated back into Sanskrit (the original
Sanskrit versions are lost) and into European languages. It is a simple frame: three sons of a king
refuse to be educated until a wise man comes along and proposes to teach them
by telling stories. The princes agree,
and in a short time learn all the wise man has to offer about statecraft,
friendship, war and peace, loss and gain, and impetuous actions. Nearly all of the stories in the Panchatantra emphasize intelligence and clear thinking as the most
valuable qualities for survival and leadership. Despite the fact that many of the tales are beast fables, the
underlying virtues are human ones -- especially the emphasis on friendship, a
secular value that idealizes bonds among members of society. Likewise, in The
Thousand and One Nights, the frame emphasizes the humanizing quality of the
storytelling. Shahrazad offers herself
as victim-wife to the King Shahryar who has determined to kill each wife after
the bridal night in vengeance by his first queen's betrayal . However, through her storytelling, Shahrazad
not only piques the curiosity of the king, but also teaches him the virtues of
forgiveness and friendship. As
Shahrazad is reborn every day in the postponement of her death, so the theme of
renewal -- the possibility of beginning over and over again runs through the
narrative. The frame, as is typical of
Arabic practice, is a loose one -- the thousand and one signifies an unlimited
number in Arabic -- not a finite closure.
So as long as the storytelling continues, life goes on. The Christian exemplum (Latin, example, plural-- exempla), a didactic tale, presented an
example of behavior, which if positive, was praised or if evil, was criticized.
Medieval preachers incorporated these short tales into their sermons to
illustrate moral points. Collections of
these stories, such as Jacques de Vitry's Exempla
(c. 1200), were gathered and disseminated to assist preachers in composing
their sermons. Secular writers,
including Chaucer in his "Pardoner's Tale," often used exempla as inspiration for more
elaborate tales in verse or prose. The
source of these exempla was not strictly
of Judeo-Christian origin, however. A
famous collection, John of Capua's Directorium
humanae vitae (Guide for Human Life,
12th century), was developed from the Indic fables of Bidpai via an
eighth-century Arabic translation and a subsequent Hebrew translation. Exempla and Oriental frame tales merged in the earliest European collection of
framed tales, the twelfth-century Disciplina
clericalis by Petrus Alfonsi.
Alfonsi, born Moses Sefardi, a Jew from Aragon, had been a rabbi, an
Islamic scholar, and a physician before he converted to Christianity in
1106. In 1110, he traveled to England
to serve as royal physician to King Henry I.
After his conversion, he composed the Disciplina clericalis, first in Arabic and then translated it into
Latin. As narrator, Alfonsi claims that he has gathered his material partly
from Arab proverbs, fables and poems and partly from bird and animal
tales. His exempla appear within the frame of a dialogue between a dying Arab
father and his son; the father desires to impart his wisdom on friendship,
conniving women and death -- practical lessons of living in a social
world. The influence of the Disciplina clericalis reached through
all social classes, and its importance can be gauged by the number of extant
Latin manuscripts (over sixty) and the reappearance of its stories in the Gesta Romanorum, the lais of Marie de France, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio's Decameron, and the works of such
Spaniards as Juan Ruiz and Don Juan Manuel. Critics generally agree that
the transformation of exempla into novelle occurred in Tuscany in the
Thirteenth Century as the exempla
were elaborated and fused with existing tales, saints' lives, verse fabliaux and lais, and regional and classical legends. Composed between 1281 and 1300, the anonymous Novellino is considered to be the first
real Italian work of fiction. This
collection of novelle exists in two
versions: Le cento novelle antiche contains
a hundred novelle, and Il libro di novelle et di bel parlare
gientile, probably a later version, contains one hundred and fifty novelle. Many of the novelle are extremely short, little more
than anecdotes or clever sayings.
Stories of action and experience engage such historic and legendary
characters as Hercules, Hector, Alexander, Aristotle, David, Solomon, Christ
and his disciples, Seneca, Charlemagne, Arthur, Richard the Lionhearted, and
Emperor Frederick II -- figures from the far and near past -- all dressed in
contemporary costumes and practicing contemporary customs. But beyond the famous, the novelle are peopled with citizens from
all classes: knights and ladies, peasants and townsfolk, clerics and minstrels,
professors and students, angels and rascals.
While there is a didactic bent in the tales, they also celebrate wit and
intellect and are told with a hearty dose of everyday humor and some
salaciousness. The Novellino has no discreet frame to enclose its novelle, but the author's style of clever and direct storytelling
with few embellishments give the work a unifying element. This collection of novelle with its Oriental, Biblical,
classical, medieval and historical sources undoubtedly was the most important
piece of inspiration for Boccaccio's Decameron.
Boccaccio and
Italian Novelle Born
c. 1312-14, Giovanni Boccaccio was brought up in a merchant's family in
Certaldo, near Florence. As a young
man, he studied commerce and canon law in Naples where he began his literary
career and fell in love with the woman he would call Fiametta. He returned to
Florence in 1341, held various positions in Ravenna and Forli, and was settled
again in Florence by 1348 when the Black Death devastated the city. Although
deeply inspired by the work of Dante and influenced by his elder contemporary
and friend, Petrarch, Boccaccio's literary output throughout his life was
highly versatile and original. He
composed the first Italian hunting poem (Caccia
di Diana, 1336-38), the first Italian prose romance (Filicolo 1337-39), the first Tuscan epic (Teseida, 1340-42) the first
Italian prose romance with pastoral elements (Ameto, 1341-42), the first Italian psychological romance (Fiametta, 1344-46) the first Italian
idyll (Ninfale fiesolano, 1346-49),
allegories, lyric poetry, and , of course, The
Decameron (c.1349-53). The Decameron is a bit of an anomaly
among Boccaccio's other works, which tend, on the one hand to be romantic and
adventurous tales told for the aristocratic class and, on the other hand, to be
sober, learned works for the scholars. The
Decameron is at once, a collection of diverting novelle for a wide, newly literate bourgeois audience and a glimpse
into the increasingly realistic and observational art of the Renaissance. The setting for the frame of The Decameron is contemporary Florence,
a city in the midst of the Black Plague. The framing tale is a remarkable piece
of writing that heralds much of the Renaissance spirit to come. It is, undoubtedly, a grim introduction to the
light-hearted tales to follow, but the circumstances of the Florentine plague
allow for the extraordinary gathering of the young taletellers in a suburban
villa. Boccaccio's
description of plague-stricken Florence is one of the earliest European
eyewitness accounts of a disaster that neither exaggerates nor allegorizes the
events. His descriptions of the
physical symptoms of the disease are scientific: "the said deadly buboes
began to spread indiscriminately over every part of the body; and after this,
the symptoms changed to black or livid spots appearing on the arms and thighs,
and on every part of the body, some large ones and sometimes many little ones
scattered all around.... a very certain indication of impending
death." Likewise, his analysis of
the effect of the plague on the citizenry of Florence has an almost
sociological ring. He observes that
because of the high death rate, such customs as female modesty before doctors
and elaborate funeral rites, which had been commonplace, were abandoned because
of necessity. Women stricken with the
disease were grateful for the attention of any manservant, and dead family
members were interred in mass burials.
He notes that citizens resorted to a variety of means to ensure their
survival -- some fled the city, others practiced asceticism in the hopes of
warding off the deadly fumes, while still others abandoned themselves to the carpe diem pleasures of drinking and
carousing away their last days. Anarchy reigned for "like other men, the
ministers and executors of the laws were either dead or sick or so short of
help that it was impossible for them to fulfill their duties; as a result,
everybody was free to do as he pleased."
In this framing, Boccaccio depends neither upon authority nor on any
other account than his own eyewitness evidence of the material facts -- here is
a factual rendering of contemporary events that sets the tone for the
subsequent outpouring of the one hundred novelle
of The Decameron. Boccaccio gathers his seven young women together in a church --
each, has been, the narrator hastens to tell us, a faithful attendant to family
members now deceased. They decide that the wisest course for them to now follow
is to leave Florence and seek refuge in the countryside. Feeling the need for male protection, they
invite three young men to accompany them.
The ten young people, all well-born, intelligent, charming, and ranging
in age from seventeen to twenty-seven, pack up their belongings and servants
and retreat to first one and then another suburban villa for two weeks. To provide some order for their days and
amusements, a schedule of wandering in the gardens, picnicking, singing,
dancing, and late afternoon storytelling is instituted. On each of ten days, each of the companions
tells a story, following a theme set by the one chosen as king or queen for the
day. Although the companions have their
own individual traits and quirks, they are not highly individualized. Conversations and commentary go on between
the stories, but Boccaccio, unlike Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, does not connect the character of his
narrators with the tales they are telling.
He is less interested in the dynamics among the characters than in the
stories themselves. Critics
agree that the novelle in The Decameron are skillfully
constructed, filled with clearly visualized settings, well-developed
characterizations, good dialogue, and well directed narratives that arouse
suspense and curiosity. The stories are
peopled with the entire range of contemporary Italian humanity, motivated by a
desire for pleasure, self-interest, and an understanding of both the forces of
nature and society. Although the frame
lays out a different theme for each day's storytelling, the tales actually fall
into five broad categories: stories of trickery, stories of adventure, stories
of verbal wit, stories of tragedy, and stories of generosity. The changes in mood are swift and frequent,
and despite the pervading atmosphere of humor, there are moments of intense
seriousness and even pathos. The humor
ranges from gentle amusement to bawdy guffaws
-- there is no room for prudery in world of The Decameron. In the epilogue Boccaccio
claims that the audience of The Decameron
might learn from his stories: "If anyone should study them usefulness and
profit they may bring him, he will not be disappointed. Nor will they ever be thought of or
described as anything but useful and seemly, if they are read at the proper
time by the people for whom they are written." But his intent was hardly
didactic. In the proemio (prologue) to the book, he declares that the book was
written to distract those -- especially ladies --in torment, whether from
disappointed love or other circumstances.
He apologizes for the unpleasantness of the introductory description of
the plague, but maintains it a necessary prelude to the gathering of his
storytellers. And, indeed, it is their
desire for diversion that occasions the tales.
Boccaccio's novelle reveal a
secular world coming to an appraisal of its humanity, not through divine
revelation, but with an understanding of the importance of wit, intelligence,
and most of all, compassion. The influence of The Decameron was far-reaching. It was the model for story collections not
only in Italy, but also in Spain, Germany, and France. During the Fifteenth Century, translations
of the entire work appeared in Catalan, French, Castilian, and German. Translations and adaptations of individual
stories spread even more quickly and widely. Among the most well known of the
novelle are "The Three Rings," "Isabella and the Pot of
Basil," "Federigo and the Falcon," "A Garden in
January," and "The Patient Griselda." A few of the English
writers who used stories from The
Decameron include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Aphra Behn, Jonathan
Swift, Alexander Pope, John Keats, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Ernest Hatch Wilkins describes The Decameron as "the central point
of an hourglass through which, converging from many sources, the sands of
narrative pass, to be dispersed into the vast field of later fiction."
Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales Although Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1390s) has many
resemblances to The Decameron, most
critics are unwilling to admit that Chaucer was familiar with Boccaccio's
book. The connections between Chaucer's
book and Boccaccio's are stylistic and thematic, not directly verbal. Although "The Clerk's Tale," the story of
patient Griselda, is derived from The
Decameron, Chaucer used Petrarch's retelling of the tale as his model. Both
Chaucer and Boccaccio present a variety of tales from the perspectives of
different narrators; both use frame tales to set up a situation in which tales
will be told to divert and entertain the company; and both authors have an
enigmatic attitude toward the nature of language and reality. Chaucer's frame, however, is more
intricately and dramatically developed than Boccaccio's. Bound for a pilgrimage to
the Canterbury shrine of Thomas á Becket, a group of about thirty citizens
including a knight, a variety of religious figures, guildspeople, country folk,
and Geoffrey, Chaucer's affable and naive avatar, gather at the Tabard Inn
across the Thames from London.
Encouraged by Harry Bailly, the host of the inn, the pilgrims agree to a
storytelling contest on their journey.
In the prologue Geoffrey introduces each of the pilgrims in a vivid and
character-revealing sketch, and interspersed between the twenty-four tales are
lively dramatic scenes involving the host and one or more of the pilgrims. The character of each of the pilgrims and
the dynamics that evolve from their relationships with each other have a direct
effect on the impact of each tale.
Although each story can stand on its own as a narrative, the overall
impression of the whole of The Canterbury
Tales is theatrical. Unlike The Decameron, Chaucer's work did not produce the development of a
strong tradition of short fiction in England.
Arguably, Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales may not be considered novelle
at all since all but two of the tales are written in verse rather than prose.
Certainly the tales resemble novelle
as psychologically subtle and tightly structured short stories, gathered
together in a collection. But Chaucer's
inclusion of such genres as the lai,
the courtly romance, the saint's life, the allegorical tale, and the sermon
anchor The Canterbury Tales in the
Middle Ages rather than the Renaissance.
The dramatic and realistic interplay of the pilgrims, on the other hand,
hints at the outpouring of dramatic activity that would come in
sixteenth-century Renaissance England.
French Nouvelles and Marguerite of Navarre Throughout the Middle Ages, French writers
from Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France to the Chevalier de La Tour Landry
and Christine de Pizan to countless anonymous authors of romances, exempla, and fabliau, exhibited skill and mastery in short fictional forms, both
in verse and prose. At the end of the
Fourteenth Century, the first vernacular collection of exempla, the Contes moralisés,
compiled by Nicolas Bozon, appeared in France.
Nevertheless, it was the circulation of Italian novelle that provided a model for the development of French nouvelles in the Fifteenth Century. The appearance of Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (The Hundred New Short Stories, c.
1456-62), whose anonymous author declares that he consciously penned his work
in imitation of the Decameron,
occasions the first French collection of stories with no didactic overtones.
However, it is the form of Boccaccio's collection, not the stories, that are
imitated. The frame for the tales is
lightly developed -- the storytellers are named, but there is little interaction
or characterization. Some of the tales have analogues in Italian collections,
but most are retold with original twists, and all have French settings. Oral
sources probably supplied much of the material as the author claims they are of
fresche memoir. The
novella in France reached its peak in
the Sixteenth Century in response to the growing bourgeois audience's demand
for an art based, not on aristocratic fancies, but on everyday life. The basic
narrative technique depended upon a brief exposition, a humorous dénouement
dependent on a twist ending or trick, and a swift conclusion. The clear connection between the audience
and the narrator and the dependence on oral sources is revealed in the use of
repetitive devices, stereotyped reactions to events, and the use of verbal
irony and understatement. A rather
static and cynical view of human nature with a tendency to divide people into
stereotypical categories leads to an emphasis on action over character or thought. Nevertheless, the settings
of the nouvelle are highly realistic:
the audience demanded vérité --
truthfulness, and the authors responded by asserting that their stories really
happened and by providing such specificity of everyday life, that the nouvelle remain one of the most reliable
sources about how people actually lived in fifteenth and sixteenth-century
France. There is practically no use of
the marvelous, miraculous, supernatural, or exotic -- the authors are
self-consciously and patriotically French.
Dialogue reflects accurate patterns of speech with dialectical and regional variations. The world of the nouvelle
is highly materialistic, yet informed by a psychological awareness of human machinations, especially
regarding the powers of manipulation. Adultery, corruption of clergy, and the bon tour -- the good trick -- are the
major themes. The stories of adultery
usually focus on unfaithful wives, reflecting the pervasive misogyny of the
times. But the tales also reflect a
growing dissatisfaction with social mores that decreed arranged marriages,
often between young girls and much older husbands. Likewise, the stories of corrupt clergy are implicit criticisms
of a system in which younger sons were often forced into a religious life with
no vocation. The stories of good tricks
often have as protagonist a wise fool -- an individual who survives and
succeeds because of his own ingenuity. The
stories in Philippe de Vigneulles' Les
Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (The Hundred
New Short Stories c. 1505-1515), unpublished during his lifetime, are told
by a group of gentlemen spending time in a garrison during a truce. Although the stories reflect a high degree
of familiarity with Italian originals, they are reset in a French town and
reflect the local color. Le Grand
Parangon Des Nouvelles Nouvelles (1535-57) by Nicolas de
Troyes, a harness- maker, presents a realistic depiction of French peasantry
and dialogue with good character delineations and clear prose. His nouvelle
contain a genuine concern for the poor and desire for social justice. In
the Baliverneries (1548), Noël du
Fail entangles the frame and narrative. The three protagonists are more
interested in discussing their own experiences and commenting on others'
experiences than actually telling stories, which are little more than anecdotes
or examples -- the storytelling is beginning to be replaced by
conversation. The reputation of
Bonaventure Des Périers, a serious Renaissance humanist in the service of Marguerite de Navarre, was
preserved by the posthumous publication of Les
Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis (
New Recreations and Joyous Devices,
1558). His literate and witty stories
depend on less rigid forms than those of his predecessors -- some even start in media res. He is more interested in
human eccentricities than plot devices, and his gay, lighthearted tone is
enhanced by Rabelaisian verbal wit. The
most important and influential sixteenth-century French collection of nouvelles is L'Heptaméron ( 1558, 1559) by Marguerite of Navarre. Marguerite de
Valois (1492-1549), sister to King François I of France, duchess of
Alençon (married 1509 to Charles, Duc d' Alençon) and queen of Navarre (married
1526 to King Henri II of Navarre) was at the center of the brilliant French court, introducing
refinements which would lead to the literary salon society of the Seventeenth
Century. As patron of such literati as
Rabelais and Des Périers and protector of religious reformers, she participated
in the major intellectual movements of her time. Marguerite commissioned the first French translation of the Decameron by Le Maçon in 1545. The French court and Marguerite herself had
long considered a French version of Boccaccio's masterpiece. After her brother died, Marguerite spent
more time at her husband's estates and began to put together the work that
would become L'Heptaméron, a
collection of seventy-two stories told by ten aristocratic devisants or storytellers.
Like Boccaccio's collection, Marguerite's is occasioned by a natural
disaster, in this case a flood. While they await the building of a bridge
replacement, her travelers decide to tell stories to pass the time -- but
restrictions are put on the tales: each must be a tale of something the
narrator either witnessed or heard from a reliable source and the stories must
be told without literary rhetorical devices.
Marguerite's storytellers are all based on members of her circle,
including herself and her husband, and the discussions that ensue reflect a
variety of philosophical and moral positions.
Unlike most of her contemporaries, Marguerite took the institution of
marriage seriously, and she understood the complexity of the human condition.
The theme of love is intertwined with social and religious concerns, not simply
an occasion for bawdy laughter. Indeed,
love, marriage and the relationship between the sexes are more often
problematic than pleasurable in L'Heptameron. Marguerite's influence was central in
fostering French humanism, and L'Heptameron
served as a stylistic, if not thematic, model for such seventeenth-century
collectors of tales as Perrault and LaFontaine.
Cervantes and the Spanish Novelle The earliest influence on the development of
the prose tale in Spain was, undoubtedly, Arabic. The eight hundred years of Moorish presence in Spain fostered the
diffusion of Arabic learning and culture.
When the Spaniards recaptured Toledo, it became a center for translation
from Oriental sources. In the
Thirteenth Century, Kalilah wa Dimnah,
the translation of an Arabic beast fable, and Sendebar, an adaptation of the Oriental Seven Sages tales, were the
first examples of storytelling in Spanish.
Translations of other collections of Eastern stories found their bridge
into Europe through Spain. Don Juan Manuel's Libro de los enxiemplos del conde Lucanor et de Patronio ( 1328-35,
Count Lucanor: or, The Fifty Pleasant
Stoies of Patronio), a collection of exempla,
draws on Arabic sources, but exhibits an originality that marks it as an
important harbinger of Spanish fiction. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's
(1547-1616) claims to have written the first collection of novellas in
Castilian is probably justified. His Novelas
ejempalres ( 1613, Exemplary Novellas),
composed after Don Quixote, contains
twelve tales that vary in style and tone, but mainly fall into the two categories
of romance-based stories and realistic stories. The focus of the tales is neither didactic nor simply
entertaining; Cervantes here, as in Don
Quixote, is interested in the nature of man's existence in the world. Cervantes dispensed with the frame tale as
did most of the Spanish novella writers of the 1620s and 1630s. One notable exception is Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor who wrote two
collections of novellas set in the same frame: Novelas amorosas y exemplares (1637 Amorous and Exemplary Stories) and Desengaños amorosos (1647 Amorous
Disillusions). In both collections, Lisis, a young noblewoman is suffering
from mal de amor (the malady of
love), and her female friends gather around to tell tales about love, desire
and male treachery. All the tales are told
by women for women, and the tone is cautionary -- in a patriarchal, machismo
society women are often at the mercy of male treachery. Popular in her own day, Zayas' frankness and
openness about sexuality relegated her to the ranks of scandalous writers in
the views of later literary critics. In
the last of half of the Twentieth Century, however, her works have been
rediscovered and have garnered a canonical status in the literature of the
Spanish Golden Age.
Influence of the Renaissance Novella The emergence of the novel in the Seventeenth Century, the resurgent
popularity of drama and poetry, and a preference for journalistic sketches and
travel literature, led to a decline of short fiction for about two hundred
years. Nevertheless, Renaissance drama,
especially in England, was highly indebted to novella collections for
plots. And, it was the realism
introduced by the Renaissance novella, along with the keen psychological
insights about human behavior that fostered the techniques that led to the development
of the novel. The audience of female
readers courted by novella writers was the same audience that writers of novels
would tap to ensure the success of their endeavors. As the short story emerged in Europe and America at the turn of
the Nineteenth Century, such pioneers of the realistic story as Goethe and
Schlegel acknowledged the debt to Boccaccio. The novella, with its fusion of
Eastern and Western elements, is a cornerstone in the development of modern
literature. Annotated Bibliography Bergin, Thomas G. Boccaccio. New York: The Viking Press, 1981. An approachable and comprehensive study of Boccaccio's
life and works. Caporello-Szykman, Corradina. The Boccaccian Novella: The Creation and Waning of a Genre. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
Caporella-Sszykman argues that the true novella genre only existed between the
publication of Bocaccio's The Decameron
in 1353 and Cervante's Novelas ejemplares
in 1613. Cholakian, Patricia and Rouben. The Early French Novella: An Anthology of Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century French
Tales. Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1972. A collection
of French Renaissance nouvelles with an introduction
discussing the history, themes, characters
and realism of the genre. Clements, Robert J. and Joseph Gibaldi. Anatomy of the Novella: The European Tale Collection from Boccaccio
and Chaucer to Cervantes. New York: New York UP,1977. Forni, Pier Massimo. Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's Decameron. Philadelphia:
U of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. A study
of rhetorical tools used by Boccaccio in his development of vernacular realism. Gittes, Katherine S. Framing the Canterbury Tales: Chaucer and the Medieval Frame Narrative Tradition. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991. A study of the
Eastern and Western traditions of the frame narrative from the Eighth to the
Fourteenth Century that illuminate the methodology of the Canterbury Tales. Greer, Margaret Rich. Desiring Readers: Maria de Zayas tells Baroque Tales of Love and the Cruelty of Men. University Park:
Pennsylvania State UP, 2000. A comprehensive study of Zayal's prose that
explores the relationship between narration and desire -- the desire for
readers and the sexual desire that drives the telling of the novellas. Menocal, Maria Rosa. The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. A discussion of the
influence of Arabic culture and literature on medieval and Renaissance
literature. Thompson, Nigel S. Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of the "Decameron"
and the "Canterbury Tales." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Thompson uses connections between the two
works to argue that Chaucer was familiar with The Decameron. Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. A History of Italian Literature. Rev. Thomas H. Bergin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1974. A chronological history of
Italian literature from the Thirteenth Century to the Twentieth with chapters
on Boccaccio and his contemporaries.
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This article was first
published in a somewhat different format in:
Critical Survey of
Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition. Ed. Charles E. May. 7 vols. Salem
Press, 2001.
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