GENERAL BACKGROUND

Alongside Latin, French was ‘the other medieval language of prestige’ for many European countries, including Italy. Given this linguistic cachet, French literary productions were readily imported into Italy, where romance texts proved no less alluring than in France. Medieval inventories and extant manuscripts prove the remarkable variety and quantity of Arthurian books in French that were produced and owned in Italy. Arthurian stories were transmitted orally by jongleurs early on, and lengthy written texts were also translated or reworked into local vernaculars to accommodate readers who lacked fluency in French.

Although a definitive account of the transmission of Arthurian material into Italy still needs to be written, evidence suggests diverse routes of transmission: from France into the Veneto, from France to Naples and thence to Tuscany, and from Tuscany northeastward. The Venetian troubadour Bartolome Zorzi mentioned ‘Lamorat’ in a planh (funeral lament) written in 1268. Since this character only appears in the prose Roman de Tristan (c. 1230–35), the romance must have become known in the Veneto within decades of its composition. Extant manuscripts in Franco-Italian that contain the prose Tristan include one copied by ‘Johannes de Stennis’ in prison at Padua in 1298, and another copied by ‘Pierre Schach’ at Verona in 1323. Filipone Bonacolsi's will (Mantua, 1325) mentions a Tristano in his possession; it was the property of Blancocio Capersari, a Florentine banker. The Tristano Corsiniano was copied in the Veneto, but contains many tuscanisms; its content, although abbreviated, shares much with the Tristano Panciatichiano, which conserves western Tuscan linguistic traits and was once owned by a Florentine. There is also non-literary evidence for the transmission of the legend to northeastern Italy: a fragmentary fresco cycle in a medieval palace in Pordenone shows scenes of Tristan's earlier adventures. Although these episodes are not included in the Corsiniano, the frescoes were probably done in the second half of the fourteenth century, making them roughly contemporary with the date of the manuscript's copying.