of
Caravaggio.[2] It is astonishing that a person of Straparola's
popularity should have left behind him nothing but a name. We only know
that he was born near the end of the fifteenth century at Caravaggio,
now a small town half way between Milan and Cremona, but during the
Middle Ages an important city belonging to the duchy of Milan. In 1550
he published at Venice a collection of stories in the style of the
_Decameron_, which was received with the greatest favor. It passed
through sixteen editions in twenty years, was translated into French and
often printed in that language, and before the end of the century was
turned into German. The author feigns that Francesca Gonzaga, daughter
of Ottaviano Sforza, Duke of Milan, on account of commotions in that
city, retires to the island of Murano, near Venice, and surrounded by a
number of distinguished ladies and gentlemen, passes the time in
listening to stories related by the company. Thirteen nights are spent
in this way, and seventy-four stories are told, when the approach of
Lent cuts short the diversion. These stories are of the most varied form
and origin; many are borrowed without acknowledgment from other writers,
twenty-four, for example, from the little known Morlini, fifteen from
Boccaccio, Sachetti, Brevio, Ser Giovanni, the Old-French _fabliaux_,
the Golden Legend, and the _Romance of Merlin_. Six others are of
Oriental origin, and may be found in the _Pantschatantra_, _Forty
Viziers_, _Siddhi Kur_, and _Thousand and One Nights_.[3] There remain,
then, twenty-nine stories, the property of Straparola, of which
twenty-two are _maerchen_, or popular tales. We say "the property" of
Straparola: we mean they had never appeared before in the _literature_
of Europe, but they were in no sense original with Straparola, being the
common property which the Occident has inherited from the Orient. There
is no need of mentioning in detail here these stories as they are
frequently cited in the notes of the present work, and one, the original
of the various modern versions of "Puss in Boots," is given at length in
the notes to Chapter I.[4] Two of Straparola's stories have survived
their author's oblivion and still live in Perrault's "_Peau d'Ane_" and
"_Le Chat Botte_," while others in the witty versions of Madame D'Aulnoy
delighted the romance-loving French society of the seventeenth
century.[5] Straparola's work had no influence on contemporary Italian
literature, and was so