f Le Eroidi glossate del ms. Gaddiano reliqui 71: dalla tradizione ovidiana francese alla novella italiana

The analysis of the glosses accompanying the fourteenth-century Italian translation of the Heroides preserved in the MS Gaddiano reliqui 71 of the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence sheds new light on the literary amalgamation between matière de Troie and Ovidian works, a phenomenon that goes back to some of the prose versions of the Roman de Troie, direct source for the Italian text. Given their distinctive nature and probable chronological décalage, the commentaries found in the MS Gaddiano reveal the existence of what appear to be diverse layers of glosses, since it is possible to recognize here moralizing notes characteristic of clerical commentaries next to lyrical quotations such as those frequently found in transalpine romances a farcitura, in addition to some mythological glosses whose unusual narrative development betrays remarkable affinities with several sections of the Ovide moralisé and the French vernacular versions of the Ars Amatoria. By means of merging materials derived from their transalpine precedents with classical apologues, some of these glosses function as brief narrative units of their own that depart from these French models in their degree of stylistic re-elaboration, paving the way for the first examples of the Italian novella that will end by converging and culminating in the compilation known as the Novellino.