Translation and literary history: The influence of Matteo Bandello in the conformation of the XVII century Spanish novel
Abstract
Matteo Bandello's (1485-1561) Novelle offer a magnificent example of the intricate relationships that exist between translation and the history of literary forms. In this paper we try to demonstrate that the work of Bandello is located at the origin of two narrative genres that will successively occupy the center of the Spanish literary system in the first half of the seventeenth century: the picaresque novel and the short courtly novel.
It happens however that there are two different Bandellos: the first one in that of the original Italian edition, which is read and imitated by the authors of the first baroque generation, such as Mateo Alemán, Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de Vega; the second one is that of the French adaptation by Boaisteau and Belleforest and the Spanish translation of Vicente Millis (1589), which is preferred by the authors of the second generation, such as Castillo Solórzano, María de Zayas and Salas Barbadillo, according to very precise literary intentions.