‘States in Woe’ and ‘Wretched Wights’: George Turberville’s "Tragical Tales" and the Italian 'Novelle'

Several Elizabethan writers were fascinated by Italian novellas and often translated them resorting to a didactic or moralizing stance. From this point of view, George Turberville represents an interesting case study: he wrote the Tragical Tales (1587), a collection of ten novellas in verse, which were “translated […] out of sundrie Italians”, as the titlepage highlights. Indeed, Turberville drew on five novellas of the Decameron’s fourth Day, dedicated to tragic love stories, focusing on lovers led to a miserable death or noble characters who are victims of their own passions. These tragic stories are juxtaposed with other three offered by Mambrino Roseo’s Selva di varia lezione, dealing with blood-thirsting tyrants and star-crossed lovers. But Turberville chose from the Decameron other two stories pivoting on marvellous events, from the infernal hunt of the novella of Nastagio degli Onesti (V 8) to the astonishing “resurrection” in the novella of Gentile de’ Carisendi (X 4). This selection of Italian novellas is due to a specific project: in his address to the readers, Turberville explained that in “Boccas” and other “Italian authours” he found the matter he was searching for, represented by “states in woe” and “wretched wights”. Despite this appreciation of the Italian novellas’ subjects, he did not renounce a dose of didacticism, commenting on the events in particular in the lenvoys he added at the end of each tale. Thus, he offered his readers profitable teachings and tamed at the same time the morally dangerous topics addressed in the stories. Starting from these premises, my essay will analyse Turberville’s translating practices, including the insertion of comments and the employment of paratexts, to explain how he reshaped the meanings of the Italian novellas he selected in order to transform them into exemplary “tragical tales”. In this way, I will be able to locate this collection of tales within the context of the Elizabethan reception of the Italian novella tradition, defining the idea of Italy and, more specifically, of the Italian novella Turberville suggested.