Proliferation of forms

The Middle Ages in Europe was a time of the proliferation, though not necessarily the refinement, of short narratives. The short tale became an important means of diversion and amusement. From the medieval era to the Renaissance, various cultures adopted short fiction for their own purposes. Even the aggressive, grim spirit of the invading Germanic barbarians was amenable to expression in short prose. The myths and sagas extant in Scandinavia and Iceland indicate the kinds of bleak and violent tales the invaders took with them into southern Europe.

In contrast, the romantic imagination and high spirits of the Celts remained manifest in their tales. Wherever they appeared—in Ireland, Wales, or Brittany—stories steeped in magic and splendour also appeared. This spirit, easily recognized in such Irish mythological tales as Longes mac n-Uislenn (probably 9th-century), infused the chivalric romances that developed somewhat later on the Continent. The romances usually addressed one of three “Matters”: the “Matter of Britain” (stories of King Arthur and his knights), the “Matter of France” (the Charlemagne cycle), or the “Matter of Rome” (stories out of antiquity, such as those of Pyramus and Thisbe and of Paris and Helen). Many, but not all, of the romances are too long to be considered short stories. Two of the most-influential contributors of short material to the “Matter of Britain” in the 12th century were Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France. The latter was gifted as a creator of the short narrative poems known as the Breton lays. Only occasionally did a popular short romance like Aucassin and Nicolette (13th century) fail to address any of the three Matters.

Also widely respected was the exemplum, a short didactic tale usually intended to dramatize or otherwise inspire model behaviour. Of all the exempla, the best known in the 11th and 12th centuries were the lives of the saints, some 200 of which are extant. The Gesta Romanorum (“Deeds of the Romans”) offered skeletal plots of exempla that preachers could expand into moralistic stories for use in their sermons.

Among the common people of the late Middle Ages there appeared a literary movement counter to that of the romance and exemplum. Displaying a preference for common sense, secular humour, and sensuality, this movement accounted in a large way for the practical-minded animals in beast fables, the coarse and “merry” jestbooks, and the ribald fabliaux. All were important as short narratives, but perhaps the most intriguing of the three are the fabliaux. First appearing around the middle of the 12th century, fabliaux remained popular for 200 years, attracting the attention of Boccaccio and Chaucer. Some 160 fabliaux are extant, all in verse.

Often, the medieval storyteller—regardless of the kind of tale he preferred—relied on a framing circumstance that made possible the juxtaposition of several stories, each of them relatively autonomous. Since there was little emphasis on organic unity, most storytellers preferred a flexible format, one that allowed tales to be added or removed at random with little change in effect. Such a format is found in The Seven Sages of Rome, a collection of stories so popular that nearly every European country had its own translation. The framing circumstance in The Seven Sages involves a prince condemned to death; his advocates (the seven sages) relate a new story each day, thereby delaying the execution until his innocence is made known. This technique is clearly similar to that of The Thousand and One Nights, components of which can be dated to as early as the 8th century but which was not translated as a single collection in Europe until the 18th century. The majority of the stories in The Thousand and One Nights are framed by the story of Scheherazade. Records indicate that the basis of this framing story was a medieval Persian collection, Hazār afsāna (“Thousand Romances,” no longer extant). In both the Persian and Arabian versions of the frame, the clever Scheherazade avoids death by telling her king-husband a thousand stories. Though the framing device is identical in both versions, the original Persian stories within the frame were replaced or drastically altered as the collection was adapted by Arab writers during the Mamlūk period (1250–1517 ce).

Britannica Quiz

The Literary World

Refinement

In Europe, short narrative received its most refined treatment in the Middle Ages from Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio. The versatility Chaucer displays in The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400) reflects the versatility of the age. In “The Miller’s Tale” he artistically combines two fabliaux; in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” he draws upon material common to beast fables; in “The Pardoner’s Tale” he creates a brilliantly revealing sermon, complete with a narrative exemplum. This short list hardly exhausts the catalogue of forms Chaucer experimented with. By relating tale to teller and by exploiting relationships among the various tellers, Chaucer endowed The Canterbury Tales with a unique, dramatic vitality.

Boccaccio’s genius, geared more toward narrative than drama, is of a different sort. Where Chaucer reveals a character through actions and assertions, Boccaccio seems more interested in stories as pieces of action. With Boccaccio, the characters telling the stories, and usually the characters within, are of subordinate interest. Like Chaucer, Boccaccio frames his well-wrought tales in a metaphoric context. The trip to the shrine at Canterbury provides a meaningful backdrop against which Chaucer juxtaposes his earthy and pious characters. The frame of the Decameron (from the Greek deka, 10, and hēmera, day) has relevance as well: during the height of the Black Plague in Florence, Italy, 10 people meet and agree to amuse and divert each other by telling 10 stories each. Behind every story, in effect, is the inescapable presence of the Black Death. The Decameron, likely written between 1349 and 1353, is fashioned out of a variety of sources, including fabliaux, exempla, and short romances.

Spreading popularity

Immediately popular, the Decameron produced imitations nearly everywhere in western Europe. In Italy alone, there appeared at least 50 writers of novelle (as short narratives were called) after Boccaccio.

Learning from the success and artistry of Boccaccio and, to a lesser degree, his contemporary Franco Sacchetti, Italian writers for three centuries kept the Western world supplied with short narratives. Sacchetti was no mere imitator of Boccaccio. More of a frank and unadorned realist, he wrote—or planned to write—300 stories (200 of the Trecentonovelle [“300 Short Stories”] are extant) dealing in a rather anecdotal way with ordinary Florentine life. Two other well-known narrative writers of the 14th century, Giovanni Fiorentino and Giovanni Sercambi, freely acknowledged their imitation of Boccaccio. In the 15th century Masuccio Salernitano’s collection of 50 stories, Il novellino (1475), attracted much attention. Though verbosity often substitutes for eloquence in Masuccio’s stories, they are witty and lively tales of lovers and clerics.

With Masuccio the popularity of short stories was just beginning to spread. Almost every Italian in the 16th century, it has been suggested, tried his hand at novelle. Matteo Bandello, the most influential and prolific writer, attempted nearly everything from brief histories and anecdotes to short romances, but he was most interested in tales of deception. Various other kinds of stories appeared. Agnolo Firenzuolo’s popular Ragionamenti diamore (“The Reasoning of Love”) is characterized by a graceful style unique in tales of ribaldry; Anton Francesco Doni included several tales of surprise and irony in his miscellany, I marmi (“The Marbles”); and Gianfrancesco Straparola experimented with common folktales and with dialects in his collection, Le piacevoli notti (“The Pleasant Nights”). In the early 17th century, Giambattista Basile attempted to infuse stock situations (often of the fairy-tale type, such as that of Puss in Boots) with realistic details. The result was often remarkable—a tale of hags or princes with very real motives and feelings. Perhaps it is the amusing and diverting nature of Basile’s collection of 50 stories that has reminded readers of Boccaccio. Or, it may be his use of a frame similar to that in the Decameron. Whatever the reason, Basile’s Cunto de li cunti (1634; The Story of Stories) is traditionally linked with Boccaccio and referred to as The Pentamerone (“The Five Days”). Basile’s similarities to Boccaccio suggest that in the 300 years between them the short story may have gained repute and circulation, but its basic shape and effect hardly changed.

This pattern was repeated in France, though the impetus provided by Boccaccio was not felt until the 15th century. A collection of 100 racy anecdotes, Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, “The Hundred New Short Stories” (c. 1460), outwardly resembles the Decameron. Margaret of Angoulême’s Heptaméron (1558–59; “The Seven Days”), an unfinished collection of 72 amorous tales, admits a similar indebtedness.

In the early 17th century Béroalde de Verville placed his own Rabelaisian tales within a banquet frame in a collection called Le Moyen de parvenir, “The Way of Succeeding” (c. 1610). Showing great narrative skill, Béroalde’s stories are still very much in the tradition of Boccaccio; as a collection of framed stories, their main intent is to amuse and divert the reader.

As the most influential nation in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain contributed to the proliferation of short prose fiction. Especially noteworthy are: Don Juan Manuel’s collection of lively exempla Libro de los enxiemplos del conde Lucanor et de Patronio (1328–35), which antedates the Decameron; the anonymous story “The Abencerraje,” which was interpolated into a pastoral novel of 1559; and, most importantly, Miguel de Cervantes’ experimental Novelas ejemplares (1613; “Exemplary Novels”). Cervantes’ short fictions vary in style and seriousness, but their single concern is clear: to explore the nature of man’s secular existence. This focus was somewhat new for short fiction, heretofore either didactic or escapist.

Despite the presence of these and other popular collections, short narrative in Spain was eventually overshadowed by a new form that began to emerge in the 16th century—the novel. Like the earlier Romans, the Spanish writers of the early Renaissance often incorporated short story material as episodes in a larger whole.