L'Amabile di Continentia
The Italian L'Amabile di Continentia is one of the later I (Versio Italico) redactions, and is closely related to the Erasto narrative. It is critically assumed to be Erasto's source, in fact (see Cesari (1896), Wikeley (1983), etc.). This is due to the fact that unlike most of Version I redactions, in L'Amabile the prince is not named Stefano, but rather Erasto. As in Erasto, the stepmother is named Afrodisia, while the sages are given names designed to sound Greek: Euprosigorus, Dimurgus, Thermus, Enoscopus, Philantropus, Agathus, Leucus (Campbell (1907) and Cesari (1896)). L'Amabile drops several of the expected Version I embedded stories (Vidua, Puteus, Avis), usually told by the sages. In their place, the narrative adds several new tales: Corpus Delicti (a faithful dog reveals his master's murder), Zelus (a husband believes slander about his innocent wife and murders her), and Caepulla (a father learns his son's fatal illness could have cured by a specific food). Additionally, unlike the 'rama italico antico' texts, L'Amabile gives the stepmother a seventh story, a new story titled Puer Adoptatus, bringing the narrative total back to fifteen. Of these four new texts, none are found elsewhere in the Seven Sages tradition, with the exception of Caepulla, which also appears in the Forty Viziers: Ḥikāyet-i Ḳırḳ Vezīr. Another distinguishing element is the fact that, rather than facing public execution, the empress kills herself in prison in at the end of the narrative.
L'Amabile di Continentia was likely composed in Northern Italy, judging by the prose which is a mix of Veneto and Lombardo, sometime in the fifteenth century according to Cesari (1896).
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| Modern research literature | Cappelli (1865) |
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| Note | Regarded by Wikeley (1983) to be the 'prototype' of Erasto. |
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| Notes on the frame | Sages' names are taken from Campbell, and Cesari. |
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