Università Roma Tre

Short fiction: the short stories from Boccaccio to Basile

Canonised by the Decameron, the short story or novella has always been a genre of great vitality and difficult definition. Through the analysis of a series of significant texts and authors, the course intends to follow the development of the short story and examine the different forms it takes (in prose or verse, isolated or in organic collections, autonomous or within other works) from the 14th to the 17th century, until Giambattista Basile takes up the Decameron’s structure to create a new genre, the literary fairy tale.

Textbooks for attending students:
- Elisabetta Menetti, La realtà come invenzione: forme e storie della novella italiana, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2015
- Handouts downloadable from Teams/Moodle or available from the photocopy shop in front of the Department of Studi Umanistici, from: Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron; Franco Sacchetti, Trecentonovelle; Masuccio Salernitano, Novellino; Niccolò Machiavelli, Belfagor arcidiavolo; Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso; Matteo Bandello, Novelle; Giraldi Cinzio, Ecatommiti; Francesco Straparola, Le piacevoli notti; Giovan Battista Basile, Lo cunto de li cunti.
Other materials will be provided during the lessons.

Textbooks for non-attending students:
Non-attending students will have to add one of these two texts of their choice to the syllabus for attending students:
- Giancarlo Alfano, Nelle maglie della voce. Oralità e testualità da Boccaccio a Basile, Napoli, Liguori, 2006
- La novella del Cinquecento, a cura di Sandra Carapezza, Milano, UNICOPLI, 2013