ITA332H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Matteo Bandello, Frame Story, Counter-Reformation

ITA332H Love in Renaissance

Lecture 8. 11/21/16

Matteo Bandello, (1485-1561)

• Dominican friar

Novelle

• Dedicatory letters

• Give many details, providing a sense of the time and place

• In the past read by historians as authentic, providing details on historical characters

• Later, part of the fiction, despite Bandello’s insistence on all stories being true

Novellas

• Author’s insistence on realism, on his stories being true accounts of historical events • Bandello: “true

stories”, but the order is casual

• Bandello represents himself as a copyist, as a scribe

• Getto: poetics of the truth

• Not placed in the right order

• Expressed in barbarous language

• Then let him consider that: • I was born in Lombardy and am not, therefore, a Tuscan

• That I recorded them not to teach others how to write in the (Italian) vernacular but only to memorialize

events I deemed worthy

Giulietta & Romeo

• The setting (Verona)

• Two feuding families, the Capelletti and the Montecchi,

• The two young people fall in love • they marry clandestinely

• Romeo

• The lord of the city ordered that the lovers remained buried in that same tomb, which was why

peace was made between the Montecchi and Capelletti, although it did not last long

• From the dedicatory letter: • And because I thought it worthy of compassion and of being

consecrated to posterity, I wrote it down as a warning to the young to act with restraint rather than

rashness (p.50)

Conclusions

• With his novellas, Bandello reiterates

• Authority: paternal authority, civil authority, ecclesiastical authority