Italian

The Hundred Old Tales

The Hundred Old Tales is the name given retrospectively to a collection of anonymous short stories. The stories were written by a Florentine some time between 1280 and the early fourteenth century. Their sources are diverse, coming from such places as the bible, the orient and mediæval chivalric literature. The stories are extremely brief, and at time merit the epithet anecdotes. Of particular interest are story 49, about a man who marries a pregnant lady, story 74, about Saladin and a money lender (which later found its way into the Decameron) and story 89, about a story that never ended.

The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)

The most famous collection of tales from the Renaissance, The Decameron is a collection of one hundred tales. The Decameron has a frame tale concerning ten young nobles attempting to escape the plague in Florence by travelling to a country retreat. To pass the time they each tell a story every day for ten days. Most days have a theme, for instance "stories about somebody who got out of a tricky situation with a quick reply", though on a couple of occasions it is left to the discretion of the fictitious story tellers.

Online Sources

Three Hundred Tales (Fanco Sacchetti)

Franco Sacchetti (c.1335-1400) wrote the Trecentonovelle or Three Hundred Tales during the 1390's having been inspired by Boccaccio's Decameron. His collection of tales, however, differed from Boccaccio's in that he took his stories from events in the recent past. In this sense they are a collection of anecdotes, rather than stories per se, although some of the stories are almost certainly apocryphal. Only 223 tales have survived down to the present day, of which 215 are complete.

Some of the better tales are Number 60, which concerns a dubious holy relic, Number 195, about a peasant and a greedy usher and Number 228, about an honest treasurer.

Online Sources

Sacchetti's Trecentonovelle

Modern Editions

Tales From Sacchetti

Contains 82 of the 215 surviving stories, omitting those it was felt "on account of the distance of time and place, would be less easily understood, or those relating coarse tales or jokes enjoyed and appreciated by the rude Florentines of the Trecento". The translation itself is done in a sort of mock Elizabethan, with thee's and thou's and -eth and -est suffixes.

Tales from Sacchetti
Translated by Mary G. Steegmann
1908 J.M. Dent, reprinted 1978 Hyperion Press.

Modern Collections

Italian Renaissance Tales

A marvelous and diverse collection of tales. It contains stories from seven different Mediæval and Renaissance story collections (with the conspicuous omission of Boccaccio's Decameron), as well as the novellas Fatso the Carpenter and Giulietta (which is now most famous as Shakespeare's version Romeo and Juliette). Each section has its own introduction explaining the provenance and contents of each of the original sources that the tales are taken from.

Italian Renaissance Tales Selected and Translated, with an Introduction
Janet Levarie Smarr
1983, Solaris Press