Italian literature: Encyclopedia II - Italian literature - Early prose

Italian literature - Early prose

The production of Italian poetry in the 13th century was abundant and varied, and so was that that of prose. The oldest specimen dates from 1231, and consists of short notices of entries and expenses by Mattasal di Spinello dei Lambertini of Siena. At this time, there was no sign of literary prose in Italian, though there is some in French. Halfway through the century, a certain Aldobrando or Aldobrandino, from either Florence or Siena, wrote a book for Beatrice of Savoy, countess of Provence, called Le Régime du corps. In 1267 Martino da Canale wrote in the same langue d'oïl a chronicle of Venice. Rusticiano of Pisa, who was for a long while at the court of Edward I of England, composed many chivalrous romances, derived from the Arthurian cycle, and subsequently wrote the Travels of Marco Polo, which may have been dictated by the great traveller himself. And finally Brunetto Latini wrote his Tesoro in French. Brunetto Latini also wrote some works in Italian prose such as La rettorica, ad adaptation from Cicero's De inventione and translated three orations from Cicero: Pro Ligario, Pro Marcello and Pro rege Deiotaro. Antoher important writer was the Florentine judge Bono Giamboni who translated Orosio's Historiae adversus paganos, Vegetius's Epitoma rei militaris, made a translation/adaptation of Cicero's De inventione mixed with the Rethorica ad Erennium and a translation/adaptation of [[[Innocent iii]]'s De miseria humane conditionis. He also wrote an allegorical novel named Libro de' Vizi e delle Virtudi whose earlier redaction Trattato delle virtù e dei vizi is also preserved.

Next in order to the original compositions in the langue d'oïl come the translations or adaptations from the same. There are some moral narratives taken from religious legends; a romance of Julius Caesar; some short histories of ancient knights; the Tavola rotonda; translations of the Viaggi of Marco Polo and of the Tesoro of Latini. At the same time there appeared translations from Latin of moral and ascetic works, of histories and of treatises on rhetoric and oratory. Some of the works previously regarded as the oldest in the Italian language have been shown to be forgeries of a much later time. The oldest prose writing is a scientific book the Composizione del mondo by Ristoro d'Arezzo, who lived about the middle of the 13th century. This work is a copious treatise on astronomy and geography. Ristoro was superior to the other writers of the time on these subjects, because he seems to have been a careful observer of natural phenomena, and consequently many of the things he relates were the result of his personal investigations. There is also another short treatise, De regimine rectoris, by Fra Paolino, a Minorite friar of Venice, who was probably bishop of Pozzuoli, and who also wrote a Latin chronicle. His treatise stands in close relation to that of Egidio Colonna, De regimine principum. It is written in the Venetian dialect.

The 13th century was very rich in tales. There is a collection called the Cento Novelle antiche, which contains stories drawn from Oriental, Greek and Trojan traditions, from ancient and medieval history, from the legends of Brittany, Provence and Italy, and from the Bible, from the local tradition of Italy as well as from histories of animals and old mythology. This book has a distant resemblance to the Spanish collection known as El Conde Lucanor. The peculiarity of the Italian book is that the stories are very short, and seem to be mere outlines to be filled in by the narrator as he goes along. Other prose novels were inserted by Francesco Barberino in his work Del reggimenlo e dei costumi delle donne, but they are of much less importance. On the whole the Italian novels of the 13th century have little originality, and are a faint reflection of the very rich legendary literature of France. Some attention should be paid to the Lettere of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, who wrote many poems and also some letters in prose, the subjects of which are moral and religious. Love of antiquity, of the traditions of Rome and of its language, was so strong in Guittone that he tried to write Italian in a Latin style, and it turned out obscure, involved and altogether barbarous. He took as his special model Seneca, and hence his prose assumed a bombastic style, which, according to his views, was very artistic, but which in fact was alien to the true spirit of art, and resulted in the extravagant and grotesque.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early prose", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki