Il genere novellistico al crocevia del Quattrocento

This doctoral project aims to provide a critical literary profile of Italian short story production in the fifteenth century. The textual corpus under analysis consists of the three vernacular authorial collections from this period: the novella collection attributed to the pseudo-Gentile Sermini, Il Novellino by Masuccio Salernitano, and the Porretane by Sabadino degli Arienti. The study of these works also takes into account other forms of narratio brevis – in both Latin and the vernacular – that circulated during this century.The introductory section of the dissertation is composed of three chapters. The opening chapter outlines the research aims and provides an overview of the structure of the thesis. The second chapter addresses the absence of a contemporary theory of the novella at the time these collections were produced, with a newly conducted analysis of Giovanni Pontano’s De sermone. The third chapter revisits the theoretical foundations of the novella genre in current scholarship and presents an annotated bibliography of critical studies on Italian short story writing from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century.The second section of the thesis explores questions concerning narrative form. Chapter four examines the ethical dimension that permeates fifteenth-century storytelling, considering how this moral stance differs from narrative practices of the previous century and assessing the influence of contemporary hagiographic literature. Chapter five investigates narrative temporality and rhythm, with particular attention to narrative economy and the impact of humanist rhetoric.The third section offers thematic analyses of the selected corpus. Chapter six focuses on the representation of female characters and eroticism in the Quattrocento novella, aiming to assess the extent and nature of misogyny in this literary production. Chapter seven explores the problematic presence of the supernatural in fifteenth-century novellas in light of the evolving discourse of religious orthodoxy throughout the century.The final section summarizes the findings presented in the previous chapters and delineates the distinctive features of Quattrocento short story writing, advocating for a more prominent place for this body of work within literary historiography and criticism. The appendices include an overview of Latin humanist narrative prose from the fifteenth century and provide transcriptions of previously unpublished novellas from this corpus.