SERMINI GENTILE, DA SIENA

Image from page 250
Image from page 250

SERMINI GENTILE, of SIENA. - A traditional but uncertain author of *Uno paneretto d'insalatella*, a kind of miscellany and book of memories in verse and prose, interspersed with 40 short stories, the last of which is unfinished, heard at the Petriolo Baths.

From the twelfth novella it is known that S. from Siena, having taken refuge on a nearby mountain during the plague of 1424, found a pleasant priest there, but the peasants were so uncouth that he was forced to return to his city, near the woman he loved; in order to please a friend, he collected his scattered writings “per scartabelli e squarciafogli.” He collects and recounts without a precise design, without any apparent influences, beginning with that of Boccaccio, in a spontaneous style and local language; now concise and now prolix, now delicate and now coarse, now flowing and now jubilant.

BIBL.: The novellas of G. S. from Siena, now for the first time collected and published in their entirety, Livorno 1874; 2nd ed., edited by A. Colini, Lanciano 1911; G. Fatini, Novelle del Quattrocento, Turin 1929; A. Chiari, La fortuna del Boccaccio, in Questioni e correnti di storia letteraria, Milan 1950, pp. 308-310 and 346.