Italian Literature IV: Il Tristano Riccardiano, MS 1729 (Parodi’s Siglum ’f’)

A critical edition with facing-page English translation of the fourteenth-century Il Tristano Riccardiano, MS 1729.

The French prose Roman de Tristan circulated widely in medieval Italy as attested by numerous translations and adaptations in different dialects. Two of these, preserved in Florence’s Biblioteca Riccardiana, reveal important links amongst the extant Italian Tristans. The longer version, Tristano Riccardiano, MS 2543, has been edited, re-edited and translated into English. However, its shorter sister, found in the fourteenth-century MS Ricc. 1729, has suffered almost complete critical neglect, perhaps due to its amateur production traits, complex amalgam of regional dialects and idiosyncratic script.

While its contents (Tristan’s birth, early adventures, love affair with Yseut) largely correspond to MS 2543, there are noteworthy variants. For example, the famous three-day tournament, conserved in the Tristano Panciatichiano and constituting the bulk of the Tristano Corsiniano, does not appear. MS 1729 also preserves the final episodes (Tristan’s fatal wounding, the lovers’ deaths, lamentation at Camelot), which are not found in MS 2543.

This volume offers the first critical edition of this Italian exemplar, permitting further linguistic analysis; it is accompanied by a facing-page English translation, which will open the text to a wider audience. The full introduction considers the manuscript itself, looking at such matters as its dating, illustrations, watermarks and contents, and comparing it with other redactions, whilst notes, a bibliography and index of proper names complete the apparatus.