APPENDIX I

A Provisional Table of ‘Genres’ and Provenances

The following chart is an attempt to profile the entire collection in terms of the genres and provenances of the seventy-five stories. It can have but approximate working validity because most of the designations are purely impressionistic or inferential. The ‘types’ of folk tales are usually determined by their characteristic actions or motifs, while ‘genre,’ here, can mean nothing more than ‘kind’ or ‘class,’ such as jest, trickster tale, social vignette, tale of adultery, beast fable, legend, wonder tale – a quadruped’s breakfast of labels. The purpose of the exercise is merely to demonstrate at a glance the variety of the contents, of which we might well ask not ‘what is present?’ but ‘what is missing?’ Straparola’s stories, in rather balanced proportions, make their way through the popular ‘genres’ of the age, from the jest of parking a pasty on a lady’s posterior as an error in the night (XIII.8) to the hauntingly moving tragedy of Malgherita Spolatina, led out to sea, swimming, by her own brothers in a boat, there to drown of exhaustion (VII.2). Such a chart allows for a quick appraisal of the collection’s design, or lack thereof, as a miscellany of popular and erudite tales, the latter recycled through the oral tradition. As for the thorny matter of provenance, there are only educated guesses. This column is the sum of the appraisals made in the course of compiling the commentaries, reflecting my best inferential reasoning about how the stories came to Straparola. The underlying hypothesis is that where cognate versions exist in later oral traditions, often in abundance, of stories lacking any proximate literary versions predating Straparola, probability favours a popular source for the version in the Notti. This is not to say that traces of that story tradition are non-existent in the prior literary record; in fact, most of the stories have left such traces of their passage. But the reason they cannot have served Straparola as sources is that, in order to arrive at what he wrote, he would have been compelled to restore those texts, in every instance, to a version often nearly identical to those surviving centuries later in the oral tradition. The chance that he reinvented the folk versions in such a manner, to my way of thinking, is smaller than infinitesimal. The harder call to make is whether the oral tale was once based on a written source and subsequently assumed the traits of orality. That could well have been the case with certain of the fabliaux-like or novella-like stories, followed by two centuries or more of oral modulation and structural stratification. The parentheses around ‘from written’ mean ‘possibly’ or ‘conceivably,’ nothing more. Speculation remains free. The telling statistic in it all is that of the fifty-three stories in the collection not traceable to Morlini, only five have acknowledged and demonstrable literary sources.

	Short Title	Class of Tale	Presumed Source
I.l	‘Salardo’s Disobedience’	moralizing novella	oral (from written)
I.2	‘Cassandrino’	popular tale of trickery	folk tale
I.3	‘Scarpacifico’	popular tale of trickery	folk tale
I.4	‘Doralice’	wonder tale	folk tale
I.5	‘Polissena and the Priest’	novella of adultery	oral
II.1	‘The Pig Prince’	wonder tale	folk tale
II.2	‘Filenio’s Revenge’	novella	Ser Giovanni
II.3	‘Carlo da Rimini’	saint’s life / novella	oral (from written)
II.4	‘The Devil’s Marriage’	fantasy novella	folk tale (from written)
II.5	‘Simplicio de’ Rossi’	novella	oral (from written)
III.1	‘Pietro’s Magic Fish’	wonder tale	folk tale
III.2	‘Livoretto’	wonder tale	folk tale
III.3	‘Biancabella’	wonder tale	folk tale
III.4	‘Fortunio and Mermaid’	wonder tale	folk tale
III.5	‘Isotta and Travaglino’	novella of adultery	oral / popular
IV.1	‘Costanza, Girl-Knight’	wonder tale	folk tale
IV.2	‘Erminione and Filenia’	novella	Francesco Bello
IV.3	‘Dancing Water’	wonder tale	folk tale
IV.4	‘The Physician’s Wife’	novella	Ser Giovanni
IV.5	‘Flamminio’s Quest’	wonder tale	folk tale
V.1	‘Guerrino and Wild Man’	wonder tale	folk tale
V.2	‘Adamantina’s Doll’	wonder tale	folk tale
V.3	‘The Three Hunchbacks’	novella-farce	folk tale (fabliau)
V.4	Tia Rabboso’	novella of adultery	oral / popular
V.5	‘Modesta’s Shoes’	novella / popular tale	new / oral
VI.l	‘Wives in Common’	novella	Boccaccio, et al.
VI.2	‘Castorio’s Castration’	pop. tale / jest	oral / popular
VI.3	‘The Widow’s Promise’	novella / anecdote	oral / popular
VI.4	‘The Three Rival Nuns’	jest / popular tale	oral / popular
VI.5	‘The Virtue of Stones’	anecdote / jest	Morlini
VII.l	‘The Wife and the Witch’	fantasy novella of adultery	oral / popular
VII.2	‘Malgherita Spolatina’	novella	oral / popular
VII.3	‘Flogged at Court’	jest	oral / popular
VII.4	‘Share and Share Alike’	novella / anecdote	oral / popular
VII.5	‘The Three Brothers’	wonder tale	folk tale
VIII.l	‘Three Idle Rogues’	jest / popular tale	folk tale
VIII.2	‘Handling Wives’	novella	oral / popular
VIII.3	‘Image-Carver’s Wife’	novella from fabliau	oral (from written)
VIII.4	‘Lattanzio’s Sorcery’	wonder tale	folk tale
VIII.5	‘The Donkey’s Skin’	jest	Morlini
VIII.3A	‘Woes of an Old Gallant’	novella	oral (from written)
VIII.3B	‘Merchant’s Monkey’	jest	Morlini
IX.1	‘King Galafro’	novella	oral (from written)
IX.2	‘Rodolino and Violante’	novella	Boccaccio
IX.3	‘Francesco Sforza’	pseudo-hist. novella	written / oral
IX.4	‘Papiro Schizza’	jest	oral / popular
IX.5	‘Bergamasques’	jest	oral / popular
X.1	‘Veronica’s Jewels’	jest / anecdote	no known sources
X.2	‘The Lion and the Ass’	beast fable	popular (from written)
X.3	‘Cesarino and Dragon’	wonder tale	folk tale
X.4	‘Andrigetto’s Testament’	jest / anecdote	oral / popular
X.5	‘Rosolino’s Confession’	novella / anecdote	oral (from written)
XI.l	‘Constantino’s Cat’	wonder tale	folk tale
XI.2	‘The Grateful Dead’	wonder tale	folk tale
XI.3	‘Dom Pomporio’	jest based on proverb	oral / popular
XI.4	‘The Stolen Veal’	jest	Morlin
XI.5	‘Frate Bigoccio’	novella / anecdote	Morlin
XII.l	‘Florio’s Jealousy’	novella / anecdote	Morlin
XII.2	‘The Fool’s Blackmail’	novella/jest	Morlin
XII.3	‘Pozzuolo’s Wife’	novella / cautionary tale	Morlin
XII.4	‘The Disobedient Sons’	novella / anecdote	Morlin
XII.5	‘Pope Sixtus IV	pseudo-hist. tale	Morlin
XIII.l	‘Madman and Hunter’	jest / tale	Morlin
XIII.2	‘Diego and the Friar’	jest	Morlin
XIII.3	‘Spaniards and Germans’	jest	Morlin
XIII.4	‘The Servant and the Fly’	jest / popular tale	Morlin
XIII.5	‘The Fateful Sack’	Apuleian farce	Morlin
XIII.6	‘The Good Day’	jest / popular tale	Morlin
XIII.7	‘Giorgio and His Master’	jest / popular tale	Morlin
XIII.8	‘Midnight Famine’	jest	Morlin
XIII.9	‘Hermaphrodite Nun’	novella / anecdote	Morlin
XIII.10	‘Doctor of Laws’	popular tale / anecdote	Morlini
XIII.11	‘The Novice in the Barn’	novella	written sources including Morlini
XIII.12	‘Healing of Guglielmo’	anecdote	no known sources
XIII.13	‘Pietro Rizzato’	moral tale	Morlini

Morlini	22
Wonder tales (& beast fable)	17
Oral with possible written affiliations	11
Other popular tales, farces, anecdotes from oral sources	17
No known sources, written or oral	2
From known literary sources other than Morlini	5
From written source, but source unknown	1

APPENDIX II

Folk Tale Types According to the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) Index

Scattered at random throughout the commentaries to follow are story-type numbers originating in the universally employed Aarne-Thompson Types of the Folktale. That work, now called Types of International Folktales, as revised by Hans-Jörg Uther, is the source of the corresponding numbers supplied below. Also appearing sporadically throughout the commentaries are motif numbers derived from Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature – numbers which are comprehensively listed by D.P. Rotunda in his Motif-Index of the Italian Novella in Prose, and again by Donato Pirovano in his edition of Le piacevoli notti at the bottom of the first page of each story. Given this redundant record of the motif numbers, there is far less need to supply them again here. In the course of the commentaries to follow, my intention has been to identify and profile the many works antecedent to the Piacevoli notti that contribute to an understanding of his story types, and in the process of doing so I have devised analyses tantamount in some cases to early histories of the relevant types. In the centuries after Straparola, those type traditions often luxuriated into proportions far beyond my purposes, resulting in a selective representation of their afterlives. For those wishing to corroborate my type histories and fill in the later centuries from folklore reference works incorporating the ATU numbers, the following, modified from the list initially compiled by Luisa Rubini for the Enzyklopädie des Märchens, should prove useful.123

Night	Story	ATU Number	Description of the Type
I.	1	910A	Excellent advice
I.	2	1737	Priest in the sack
I.	2	1525A	The master thief
I.	3	1538	Revenge of the betrayed, or Deceiving the deceivers
I.	3	1551	The cheating contest
I.	3	1539	Trickery and gullibility
I.	3	1535	Unibos or One-ox
I.	4	510B	The princess in the chest
II.	1	433B	König Lindwurm (a wingless dragon)
II.	1	441	Hedgehog Hans
II.	1	425A	The beast bridegroom
II.	4	1164B	Belfagor
II.	4	1862B	The sham physician and the devil in league
III.	1	675	The lazy boy
III.	2	531	Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful
III.	2	554	The grateful animals
III.	2	314	The girl with the golden hair
III.	3	403	The black bride
III.	3	706	The girl without hands
III.	4	316	The nixie in the pond
III.	4	554/159	The quarrel over the stag
III.	4	665	Grateful animals grant powers of metamorphosis to hero
III.	5	889	The faithful servant
IV.	1	884/514	Woman dressed as a man
IV.	1	328	Corvetto
IV.	2	1418	Isolde’s trial by ordeal
IV.	3	707	The three golden sons
IV.	4	1364	Wife of the sworn brothers
IV.	5	326	The boy who learned to fear
V.	1	502	The wild man
V.	2	571C	The biting doll
V.	3	1536B	The three hunchbacks
V.	4	1419C	The one-eyed husband
VI.	1	1424	The nose-maker
VI.	2	1133	How to get fat
VI.	3	1565	Agreement not to scratch
VII.	1	891	The man who abandoned his wife
VII.	2	666	Hero and Leander
VII.	3	1610	The sharing of gifts and blows
VII.	5	653	The four skilful brothers
VIII.	1	1950	The laziness contest
VIII.	2	901	The taming of the shrew
VIII.	3	1359C	Tricks of adultery
VIII.	4	325	The magician’s apprentice
VIII.	5	1862C	The naïve diagnosis
IX.	3	958	The shepherd’s cry for help
IX.	4	1562A	The barn is burning
IX.	4	1940	Extraordinary names
X.	2	103C	The old donkey meets the bear
X.	2	118	The horse that terrifies the lion
X.	2	125B	Contest between the donkey and the lion
X.	3	300	Dragon, battle, and dragon-slayer
XI.	1	545B	The cat in boots
XI.	2	505	The grateful dead
XII.	2	1355A	Lord of all
XII.	3	670	The man who knew the language of animals
XIII.	2	1526A	One who leaves without paying the bill
XIII.	4	1586	The fly on the judge’s nose
XIII.	4	1600	The buried sheep’s head
XIII.	5	958C	Robber shroud
XIII.	6	1641	Doctor Know-all
XIII.	7	1562B	The list of duties
XIII.	8	1775	The hungry priest

APPENDIX III

A Table of Burton’s Titles, the Narrators, and the Settings

The names of narrators in parentheses are those of the young ladies originally designated to tell the story by the drawing of lots, but who were then replaced. The forward slash between setting locations indicates movement in the story from one place to the other.

	Burton’s Titles	Narrator	Setting
I.1	The Disobedience of Salardo	Lauretta	Genoa / Monferrato
I.2	The Stratagems of Cassandrino	Alteria	Perugia
I.3	Outwitting the Robbers	Cateruzza	Near Imola
I.4	Incestuous Designs of a King	Eritrea	Salerno / England
I.5	Surprised with a Priest	Arianna	Venice
II.1	From Swine to Man	Isabella	Anglia (England)
II.2	The Scholar and the Three Ladies	A. Molino	Bologna
		(Fiordiana)
II.3	Punishment of a Libertine	Lionora	Rimini
II.4	The Devil Worsted by his Wife	Benedetto	? / Amalfi
		(Lodovica)
II.5	The Lover in the Sack	Vicenza	Santa Eufemia, Padua
III.1	Story of Pietro the Fool	Cateruzza	Capraia Island, Liguria
III.2	Livoretto’s Wonderful Horse	Arianna	Tunis / Cairo /
			Damascus
III.3	The Damsel and the Snake	Lauretta	Monferrato / Naples
III.4	Fortunio and the King’s Daughter	Alteria	Lombardy / Polonia
III.5	The Outcome of a Woman’s Wiles	Eritrea	Bergamo
IV. 1	The Girl Knight	Fiordiana	Thebes / Bithynia
IV. 2	The Husband Outwitted	Vicenza	Athens
IV.3	Misadventures of Royal Offspring	Lodovica	Provino (Provence)
IV.4	The Physician’s Wife	Isabella	Padua
IV.5	The Finding of Life	Lionora	Ostia / environs
V.1	The Wild Man of the Woods	Eritrea	Sicily / Manda
V.2	The Wonder-working Doll	Alteria	Bohemia
V.3	The Three Hunchbacks	A. Molino	Valsabbia / Venice /
		(Lauretta)	Rome
V.4	An Adulterous Wife’s Ruse	Benedetto	Salmazza, Padua
		(Arianna)
V.5	Shoes for Love-service	Lucrezia	Pistoia
		(Cateruzza)
VI.1	Friends with Wives in Common	Alteria	Genoa
VI.2	Castrated and Content	Arianna	Carignano, near Fano
VI.3	The Widow’s Broken Compact	Cateruzza	Venice
VI.4	Three Rival Abbesses	A. Bembo	Florence
		(Lauretta)
VI.5	The Virtue of Stones	Eritrea	Bergamo
VII.1	Wife, Harlot and Witch	Vicenza	Florence / Flanders
VII.2	Daring Death for Love	Fiordiana	Ragusa, Dalmatia
VII.3	Flogged at the Pope’s Court	Lodovica	Brescia / Rome
VII.4	Share and Share Alike	Lionora	Naples
VII.5	The Three Brothers	Isabella	‘Our city’ / Chios
VIII.1	The Three Idle Rogues	Eritrea	Siena / Rome
VIII.2	The Right Handling of Wives	Cateruzza	Corneto, near Rome
VIII.3	The Sin of Luxury	Arianna	Florence
VIII.4	The Secret Arts of Sorcery	Alteria	Messina
		(Lodovica, 1555)
VIII.5	The Donkey’s Skin	Lauretta	Antenorea (Padua)
		(Veronica, 1555)
VIII.3A	The Woes of an Old Gallant	Arianna	‘Our city’
VIII.3B	The Merchant’s Monkey	Alteria	Genoa / Flanders
IX.1	Vain Precautions	Diana	Madrid
IX.2	The Fatal Grief of Love	Lionora	Budapest / Austria
IX.3	Whilst Chasing a Stag	Isabella	Milan / environs
IX.4	The Danger of a Little Learning	Vicenza	Brescia
IX.5	Outwitting the Wise	F. Beltramo	Bergamo
		(Fiordiana)
X.1	Naked as When Born	Lauretta	Verona
X.2	Ser Brancaleone	Arianna	Morea, Arcadia
X.3	With the Help of Beasts	Alteria	Calabria / Sicily
X.4	The Strange Testament	Eritrea	Como
X.5	For Love of a Son	Cateruzza	Pavia
XI.1	The Fairy as a Cat	Fiordiana	Bohemia
XI.2	The Reward of Goodness	Leonora	Trino, near
			Monferrato / Novara
XI.3	Pot Calling the Kettle Black	Diana (Lodovica)	‘Famous monastery’
XI.4	The Repast of Veal	Isabella	Vicenza
XI.5	The Gloves	Vicenza	Rome / Florence
XII.1	The Garb of Religion	Lionora	Ravenna
XII.2	The Reward of Loquacity	Lodovica	Pisa
XII.3	Conjugal Correction	Fiordiana	Naples / Pozzuolo
XII.4	Good Counsel	Vicenza	Pesaro
XII.5	The Two Vases	Isabella	Rome / Naples
XIII.1	The Wise Madman	Casale of Bol.	England / forest
XIII.2	The Spaniard’s Feast	S. Lucrezia	Cordova
XIII.3	Servant’s Chatter	Pietro Bembo	A hostel
XIII.4	Post-mortem Cuckoldry	S. Veronica	Ferrara
XIII.5	The Fatal Sack	Bernardo Capillo	Pistoia
XIII.6	The Good-day’s Greeting	S. Chiara	Cesena, Romagna
XIII.7	The Letter Killeth	F. Beltramo	Padua
XIII.8	The Peasant’s Pasty	Lauretta	Noventa, Padua
XIII.9	The Hermaphrodite Nun	A. Molino	Salerno
XIII.10	The Subtle Ignoramus	Cateruzza	Naples
XIII.11	The Novice	Benedetto of T.	Near Rovigo (Ferrara)
XIII.12	Doctor Common-sense	Isabella	Brittany (Normandy)
XIII.13	The Friends	Vicenza	Padua

APPENDIX IV

Straparola’s Illustrators

Straparola’s stories were first illustrated at the end of the sixteenth century, beginning with the Zanetti edition of 1597, followed by the editions (by the same publisher) of 1601, 1604, and 1608. Without having inspected copies of each, it cannot be said with certainty that the same set of woodcuts was used (four stories were deleted from the 1608 edition), but early practice and the recycling of such valuable printing-house commodities suggest that they were.124 (Those I saw were from the edition of 1608.) The work, by that date, was routinely printed in two octavo volumes – the first of which, in the 1608 edition, contains twenty-eight woodcuts illustrating the first thirty-one stories, less the three deleted by the censors (II.4, IV.5, and VI.4). The illustrator was clearly commissioned to produce one picture for each story. The second volume undoubtedly contains a similar number of woodcuts and arguably more, given that forty-two stories remained, less the seven from this group deleted by the authorities. This represents a substantial endeavour, whatever the final count, and a clear commitment to the book’s ongoing commercial success, despite the indexing and censorship. Some of these woodcuts are more accomplished than others in terms of poses, designs, and execution. A few are striking in the detail of their interiors, or for their accomplished perspectives. By contrast, that of Guerrino standing with his bow and arrow beside the prison grate where the wild man is imprisoned (V.1) is rigid and two-dimensional. The depiction of Tia Rabboso performing her incantations and dancing around her husband, his head inside the sifting basket (V.4), is a successful representation of a scene that would attract all the subsequent illustrators. Surprising to see, meanwhile, are the two which depict conjuring circles surrounded by mysterious symbols (VI.1 and VII.1), given the Church’s displeasure with anything having to do with black magic, spells, divination, and necromancy. The latter is of the witch Gabrina and the naked Isabella standing within the magic circle as the devil Farfarello enters at the left. Three design plans are employed in relation to the narratives: a single scene taking up the entire foreground; two scenes juxtaposed side by side on a split field; or double and even triple story episodes represented in the foreground, near, and distant backgrounds. These strategies relate to matters of aesthetics and late Renaissance design; representations of these pictorial strategies may be seen, for example, in the woodcuts illustrating Sir Thomas North’s The Fables of Bidpai (The Moral Philosophy of Doni), published in 1570 with blocks cut in Antwerp.125 The illustrator must choose either one salient scene to represent the entire story – usually a culminating moment – or show relations of cause and effect, or before and after, through the double use of the space. The picture then achieves a kind of kinetic effect as the viewer fills in the peregrinations that lead from one episode to the other. Insofar as these woodcuts are placed before each text, in a sense they also serve as emblems or enigmas that can only be explained through reading. By dint of these preliminary pictures, the stories become explanatory in the same way that the texts of the emblem books complete the meanings of the images.

Coming to later centuries, Straparola illustrated calls for an introduction to two little-known but accomplished, late nineteenth-century painters and book illustrators: Jules Arsène Garnier (1847–89), who was called upon to supply fourteen images for the 1882, French, four-volume edition of Les facétieuses nuits; and Edward Robert Hughes (1849–1914), who was commissioned for twenty images to grace the Waters translation, which first appeared in the luxurious, two-volume edition of 1894 described above. All of these illustrations were subsequently brought together in the privately printed, four-volume edition of the Waters translation for the Society of Bibliophiles, the first printing in 1898, the second in 1901 (together totalling 1,300 numbered copies). Clearly, both the French and English publishers had recognized the great pictorial potential in these stories and, to redeem their ventures, relied upon the love of handsome and exclusive illustrated books among the purchasers of the Victorian and Belle-Époque periods. For lack of particulars, we can only presume that both illustrators were provided with copies of the stories and invited to choose the subjects, plots, and scenes that most readily inspired their artistic predilections. Intriguingly, they hit upon only a few stories in common, seizing upon moments that appealed to their respective creative impulses or that were deemed the most representative moments of the stories themselves. Those two criteria must, in some ways, have been in competition. There is a particular pleasure in examining their pictures to determine, first, the precise moments in the stories which they represent, perhaps even to supply the corresponding sentences or phrases; second, why the exact scenes they chose best epitomize entire stories; and third, how their artistic talents, tastes, and proclivities found expression through the treatment of their subjects.

The matter of their periodicity merits comment, for both artists were men of their times. Garnier, arguably, makes a more concerted effort than Hughes to create interiors appropriate to historical pasts, or at least to keep them relatively spare and neutral, whereas Hughes luxuriates in the rich textures and decorative clutter of his own age. In matters of period costume, however, Hughes may have the better imagination. Garnier’s clerics appear particularly unconvincing and his young women at times look like gypsies, but specialists in these matters will be more adequately informed. Garnier has a sense of humour, of drama, and of the erotic, as well. The pose of the naked young woman fleeing the barn as the novice falls down from the loft (XIII.11) is hauntingly familiar from a formerly depicted scene of disaster. Hughes, by contrast, is thoroughly imbued with the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelites and has a penchant for beautiful women, nudity, and eroticism with overtones of mysticism, along with a tendency towards expressionist symbolism all his own. Many of his illustrations began as full-scale salon paintings and are circulated today under different titles. ‘Bertuccio’s Bride’ (XI.2) is one of his best known in this regard (it is still widely available as an art print). As the beautiful maiden, the subject of male barter, stands apprehensively in the background, Bertuccio spreads all his wealth on the ground before the rigid and death-like man, hooded and armed with a massive sword. The scene is the psychologically revealing moment of contest and suspense that culminates most renditions of ‘The Grateful Dead.’ But without that story line, the figures assume enigmatic poses, their respective gestures generating rich symbolic overtones at correspondingly archetypal levels: ‘Youth, Death, and the Maiden,’ or ‘The Vanity of Worldly Goods.’ His painting called ‘Biancabella and Samaritana’ (III.3) – representing the moment at which the snake sister provides the heroine with a beautifying bath of milk – when viewed independently from the narrative depicts a childish Venus, delightfully pretty, innocently naked, and erotically entwined by a serpent. Out of context, the snake might incite a number of interpretations, and perhaps intentionally so, for in 1895 the painting was taken to Venice for the Biennale where it raised a sensation. The most mystical of them all is the portrait of Isabella Simeoni (from ‘The Wife, the Courtesan, and the Witch,’ VII.1) on the back of the devil Farfarello, here converted into a magnificent black Pegasus flying high above the city of Florence with its Duomo and the River Arno in clear view below. She is seated side-saddle, holding the backs of the wings, her flaxen hair streaming in the wind. Today, the picture is known as ‘The Valkyrie,’ far from its source of inspiration. But Hughes was not always a symbolist. A naked man leaping from on high to escape the fatal cut in the presence of the two kneeling nuns and the image-carver’s bemused wife may be but a naked man … (VIII.3). This grand ‘tutti’ scene is the finale of the tale and features the escapee suspended in midair; it is the work of a consummate illustrator of stories, revealing meanwhile that Hughes had a reasonable sense of humour. At the same time, the symbolism of the world-upside-down in the nuns’ amazement at the miracle of the resurrected Christ appearing in the person of a ‘defrocked’ priest is not Hughes’s symbolism, but originates in the story itself.

Jules Garnier was born in Paris but trained for a time in Toulouse and later at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was the student of J.-L. Gérôme. He travelled a great deal thereafter, venturing as far as Holland, Spain, and Morocco. The restive and truculent scenes he found in the pages of Rabelais marked his artistry and some of the Straparola illustrations are clearly in this vein. Beginning in 1869, the Salon exhibited his works annually until 1888. In his lifetime he achieved a considerable reputation for his paintings of social drama, many of them concerned with punitive attitudes towards extramarital sexuality and the exploitation of women, as in ‘Constat d’Adultère’ (1883); ‘Supplice des Adultères’ (1876), set in Medici Florence; and ‘Le Droit du Seigneur’ (1872). These themes are not demonstrably visible, however, in the Straparola interpretations. Garnier had been sickly in his youth, followed the tastes of the academy, married twice (his first wife died a year after their marriage), had an influence on Seurat, and was by no means a radical, although he was a man of polemical tendencies in his painting.126 Tellingly, only shortly after Garnier had completed his illustrations for Les facétieuses nuits (1882), he was engaged in the creation of a vast circular panorama of Constantinople. It was a study in geometry and perspective involving architecture and landscape, to be viewed by popular audiences from a platform in the centre of the room.127

E.R. Hughes was born in London, an only child who nevertheless spent much of his time with his uncle – Arthur Hughes, the painter – and Arthur’s five children. He was of a gentle and docile nature, which continued with him throughout his career; he was retiring and without marked ambition, yet he was widely liked and admired. He entered the Royal Academy Schools after being encouraged by his uncle, became a student of the watercolours of Edward Burne-Jones, and was part of an active circle of young painters and architectural draughtsmen. He started exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1872 and had his own studio in Chelsea by the time he met Burne-Jones in person. The greatest part of Hughes’s early production was devoted to portraiture, but at the fashionable galleries and shows he turned towards symbolist subjects, often painted in rich golds and blues, many of his themes influenced by Italian literature. He took particular pride in his fine gift for representing nudes, including the several to be seen in the Straparola illustrations, their snowy textures in stark contrast to the dark backgrounds. He was also among the outstanding illustrators of Shakespeare’s plays. Later in his career he became an assistant to Holman Hunt who, with his diminishing eyesight, needed a careful and meticulous collaborator; Hughes actually finished some of his most famous paintings, including ‘The Light of the World’ in St. Paul’s Cathedral and ‘The Lady of Shalott.’ Among the paintings still in his own studio at the time of his death was his splendid ‘Night and her Train of Stars,’ which was purchased from Hughes’s estate by friends and presented to the Birmingham Art Gallery in 1914.

The effect of these often pictorially imposing images, positively or adversely, is the transposing of Straparola’s stories to other ages and airs. With Hughes in particular, the Victorian world is before our eyes, as in the love scene between Galeotto and Feliciana (IX.1). We see them in a Pre-Raphaelite pose in a bourgeois parlour with a period piano, a Wilton-style carpet, a Chinese, multi-drawered chest in the background covered with flowers in vases, and still more potted flowers. These scenes likewise interpret characters in most particular ways through their gestures and expressions, their levels of social energy or lassitude. Ultimately, they may be said to violate the imagination in all the ways for which book illustrators have been blamed, which is essentially by imposing upon and replacing our own text-generated representations. Yet these images are, in themselves, no more tyrannical than the interpretations of theatrical roles by individual actors. They lend particularity, substance, and often a grandeur beyond the capacities of scantier imaginations. In brief, they are readings, an added aesthetic dimension – and, in the instances of Hughes and Garnier, often very fine pictures in their own rights, employing all the most refined workshop methods from a great age of book illustration.

The images by the two hands in the Burton edition of 1906 are of a different order. Presumably both artists were commissioned by Charles Carrington, the publisher, to embellish a semi-pirated translation intent upon displacing the Garnier-Hughes-Waters extravaganza of 1898, published for the Bibliophiles. Certainly in numbers of images, this edition takes the prize. Every story is graced, often with two or three pen and ink drawings of considerable skill scattered throughout, the text forming columns around them. They are signed by a Dombrecht or Gombrecht and appear to have been executed in 1900 – six years before the book was released. News of this artist would have been welcomed, but only at a cost proportional to the level of my curiosity. This holds equally true for the Lebègue who is responsible for the spirited but naïve and sometimes cartoon-like full-page aquarelles. These are printed on thick paper and surrounded with elaborate rose-gray or burnt-sienna borders featuring intertwined figures and stylized knights with lambrequins, or naked caryatids and harpies – all too redolent of illustrated fairy-tale books for children. The colours are nevertheless varied and subtle and the nature scenes, with their ferns, flowers, and tuffets, have a significant charm bespeaking the tastes of an age. These aquarelles, no doubt expensive to produce, are covered with printed paper tissues identifying nights, fables, and the specific texts to which the pictures refer.

The pen and ink illustrations by Inge Jastram of the twenty-five Straparolan stories in Die ungetreue Polissena (1989) are of yet a different order, for while they are rather more minimal in their execution they are full of movement, expression, humour, and conceptual imagination. These are not essays in scenic representation or historicism, but in intrapersonal relations, moods, human frivolity, or human vanity, with playful eroticism galore. The contrasting expressions on the faces of the three nuns staring at the priest who is masquerading as the nude Christ on the cross are, to borrow a cliché, precious (VIII.3). These drawings contribute generously to the spirit intended by the publisher in choosing all of Straparola’s raciest tales, a collection to which is appended the descriptive title, ‘ergötzliche and tolldreiste Novellen aus dem alten Italien’ (amusingly absurd, impudent, and wanton tales out of old Italy). Of the nun about to catch an apricot seed, Jastram has her standing on her head, headgear and all, with her robe down around her waist, prepared to seize the falling pit between her nether cheeks (VI.4). No greater graphic fun with Straparola could be imagined. Jastram creates a spirit of Renaissance life of her own, reading the stories in a personal way and taking impressions, which she then drafts into these striking and memorable images.128 This artist has also illustrated Lucian of Samosata’s Hetärengespräche (Dialogues of the courtesans, 1983) and Süsser als Liebe is nichts (Nothing is sweeter than love, 1988), the sayings and poems of nine Greek women from antiquity.

A Chart of Selected Illustrators of the Piacevoli notti