Biografie illustri, episodi illustrativi: occorrenze e funzione nelle novelle di Matteo Bandello
Illustrious Biographies, Illustrative Episodes: Occurences and Function in Matteo Bandello’s Short Stories

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyze the way in which the 16th century Italian author Matteo Bandello (1485-1561) deals with the biographical genre in his extensive collection of novelle. In the Middle Ages as well as in the Renaissance, the account of the life of famous people, be they historical or legendary figures, saints or biblical characters, takes on a didactic and exemplary function, serving to teach, admonish, exhort, persuade to follow the path of virtue or dissuade from immoral behaviour. As a literary genre that draws on the exemplum, the novella invites the reader to reflect upon exemplary behaviour concentrated in a single characteristic and significant episode. Biographies and novelle often intersect thanks to the common focus on the anecdote and to the typical moralistic orientation. In Bandello, the complex relationship with the biographical genre includes the presentation of an exemplary life (Giulia da Gazuolo, I, 8), the reworking of an emblematic biography (Lucrezia, II, 21), the rewriting of a single illustrative episode taken from an actual biography (in the novella I, 58 Bandello turns out to be an attentive reader of Vasari’s Vite dei più eccellenti architetti pittori et scultori italiani da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri), the dissemination of biographical details in several novelle (Gonnella, IV, 2, IV, 23, IV, 26) and the rhetorical use of details from the biographies of illustrious people.

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