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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

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Article Open Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2022.12.009

The Survival of Medieval Literature in the Early Modern World—The Case of Giovan Francesco Straparola’s Le piacevolinotti and Their Medieval Sources

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

*Corresponding author: Albrecht Classen

Published: December 13,2022

Abstract

Many medieval literary texts survived, despite common assumptions as to the contrary, the Gutenberg Galaxy and continued to appeal to early modern audiences, especially within the genre of short prose stories. Often, however, only a careful comparative analysis makes it possible to detect the connections between a medieval tale and its inclusion in an early modern literary context. The case of Gian Francesco Straparola’s Piacevolinotti (1550 and 1553) serves here ideally to track down a number of significant medieval sources, some of which had allegedly been entirely lost already in the thirteenth century. Disregarding his obvious use of Boccaccio’s Decameron, it is often not easy to determine whether Straparola drew from French or German sources (romances, fabliaux, mæren, etc.). Nevertheless, as this study brings to light, but we can clearly identify a number of his tales where a medieval source emerges in the background. This study demonstrates how much storytellers such as Straparola still had good access to the vast treasure house of medieval romances and verse narratives and used them freely for their own purposes.

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How to cite this paper

The Survival of Medieval Literature in the Early Modern World—The Case of Giovan Francesco Straparola's Le piacevolinotti and Their Medieval Sources

How to cite this paper: Albrecht Classen. (2022) The Survival of Medieval Literature in the Early Modern World—The Case of Giovan Francesco Straparola's Le piacevolinotti and Their Medieval Sources. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science6(4), 555-566.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2022.12.009