NOVELLINO. - A collection of 99 tales and a prologue, preserved in cod. Vat. lat. 3214 (of Bembo, 1513), in the Gualteruzzi printing (Bologna
1925), and in the first part of cod. Panciat. 32. It was called Libro di novelle e di bel parlar gentile (according to cod. Panciat. 138, now 32), or Cento novelle antiche (to distinguish them from those of the Decameron), and N. in the sixteenth century (e.g., Della Casa, letter of 27 July 1525).
The author was certainly a Florentine, writing toward the end of the thirteenth century, of Ghibelline and Christian sentiments, despite certain freedoms characteristic of storytellers. He gathered together “some flowers of speech, of fair courtesies and fine replies and noble deeds, of handsome gifts and fair loves, from times past, e.g., for the benefit and pleasure of those who do not know and desire to know”; and he translated them from oral and written, classical and medieval, biblical and mythological sources, presenting them with lively sympathy for traits of intelligence, with a precise sense of reality, in a simple yet effective form, and with spontaneous artistic taste, if not indeed with conscious purpose.
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