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Franco Sacchetti (1332–1400) may be considered Boccaccio’s most important follower in the ‘golden century’ of the Italian literary language, and his Novelle rank among the undisputed classics of early Italian literature. However, with no extant autograph witness, their text must be reconstructed from manuscripts copied almost two centuries after (second half of the sixteenth century). Thus, the authorial form of the collection title has been long disputed, but often with little attention paid to period documentation. This essay attempts to outline the main issues of the discussion, which has been recently reopened with new arguments, and to reassess it in the light of the work’s reception history as well as authorial intention. Despite their great importance as both literary and documentary sources, Franco Sacchetti’s short stories have enjoyed spotty philological attention in the last hundred years. Written during the last decade of the fourteenth century, the Novelle were not completed by their author, nor licensed for reading outside a private circle of close friends and relatives.1 Thus, the work was not copied or circulated for many years, until — shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century (Drusi 2012, 43–4) — it was found by the famous Florentine philologist Vincenzio Borghini (1515–1580).2 Borghini found the only extant witness of Sacchetti’s novelle 1. As is well known, Sacchetti turned down even some requests by fellow poets to read them, as may be seen from his autograph Rime (Ageno 1990, CCCVI a–b). See also Di Francia 1902, 90; and Zaccarello 2008a, 15 and n 29. 2. The scientific literature on Borghini is impressive: for an introduction, see Folena 1971. For more recent scholarship, see Belloni and Drusi 2002, Woodhouse 2010, and Drusi 2012. H. Wayne Storey’s presidential address at STS 2019, published in issue 13.1 of this journal (pp. 1–28), was also dedicated to Borghini. M. Zaccarello : What’s in a Title | 71 (possibly, but not necessarily an autograph), and — given its poor conditions: lacero e guasto as he described it (Zaccarello 2008a, 107 n6) — prompted its transcription by some professional scribes in two subsequent sessions (during the 1570s). The resulting manuscripts are B and L. Manuscript B was itself heavily damaged and now survives in two sections, both in Florentine libraries (B = Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale [BNCF], VI 112 + Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana [BML], XLII 12). Moreover, unlike what was traditionally believed, the separation of the two parts was almost immediate and was probably carried out to help Borghini and his collaborators to work on Sacchetti’s text: La lettera [Borghini to Giorgio Vasari, 5 August 1564] ci dice che Borghini non si era privato della seconda parte nei primi anni Settanta bensì quasi un decennio prima, e che non fu una separazione casuale ma volontaria: o almeno tale induce a ritenerla il nome di Braccio Ricasoli, che del Borghini fu frequente collaboratore in materia di testi volgari.3 The second copy, L (L = BML, XLII 11), was transcribed at a later stage, but some marginalia in Borghini’s hand make it clear that it was completed ante 1580, the year of Borghini’s death, and again possibly upon his request. But what happened to the damaged original of Sacchetti’s text? Though heavily damaged and ultimately lost, the early, possibly autograph artefact must have remained in circulation for some years. Is it possible that it did not attract further attention within or outside Borghini’s circle of collaborators? According to a hypothesis I have advanced since 2004, the damaged original may have been transcribed once again, this time by amateur scribes who were interested in the text’s content and meaning, rather than in the aesthetic quality of their work. In other words, even though their antegraph must have been damaged even more severely than at the time in which it was used by Borghini’s scribes,4 it is possible that such copisti per 3. Drusi 2012, 44. Further examples of codices that were divided to be more manageable by Borghini’s équipe are listed at 63–4. In MS BNCF, II ii 8, in Borghini’s hand, multiple references are made to the two sections (primo / secondo volume): see Zaccarello 2014, XLII. 4. As may be seen in the further loss of approximately 20 novelle: Borghini’s manuscripts have, at least in part, 222 novelle and their numbering reaches 258, a figure that includes those completely lost. The tradition derived from z has 202 tales, even though its readings avoid numbering errors, such as the merging of two novelle that have little in common except the mention of Portovenere: in 72 | Textual Cultures 13.2 (2020) passione (Branca 1961) would have been able to read more carefully and understand parts of the text that were simply overlooked by their “professional” counterparts.5 We do not have the direct result of this “amateurish” copy (that we may call z), but a large group of shared errors, innovations, and lacunae reveals two direct descendants: the eighteenth-century MS BNCF, II i 25 (N), which has long been familiar to Sacchetti scholars, and a codex found in a college library at Oxford in the early 2000s (G = Wadham College, A.21.24: see Zaccarello 2004 and 2017a). However, one of the paramount textual amendments that the recent critical edition has drawn from this “new” branch of manuscript transmission is the title: Le Trecento Novelle, rather than the vulgate Il Trecentonovelle. Even before the new witness was discovered and the textual transmission re-assessed, the latter title — though adopted in all editions during the twentieth century — had been widely discussed. Whilst Puccini thinks it may be Sacchetti’s own creation, reflecting his “atteggiamento creativo nei confronti della lingua” (2002, 94), Matt believes it is a possible adaptation of the title by which Boccaccio’s masterpiece Il Decameron, consisting of a hundred tales, was commonly known in the Renaissance, Il Centonovelle, and argued that “il titolo il Trecento Novelle si debba alla penna di Borghini (o di uno dei suoi collaboratori), che si sarà rifatto al modello” (2004, 115). It is worth noting that Matt, on top of considering Le Trecento Novelle as the title’s only plausible authorial form (and its counterpart as a scribal innovation, as we just read), quotes both variants as two split words: il / le Trecento Novelle, given the presence of the related participle composte in all extant manuscripts, including Borghini’s, where the numeral and the noun are also separated by medium/strong punctuation (: or ;). Accordingly, the initial rubric reads in the latter: Proemio del CCC° : novelle , composte per Franco Sacchetti (B) and Proemio del CCC° : novelle ; composte per Franco Sacchetti (L), as may be seen in Figures 1–2 (below): the new edition, they have been numbered 177 and 177bis to avoid disrupting the traditional identification of the tales (Zaccarello 2014, 446–51). 5. The same tendency to interpret the text may account for some additions and adjustments, so it is very important to assess each of the various paragraphs which are only found in the tradition arising from z on specific linguistic and textual grounds, using the various forms of evidence offered by the two branches of textual transmission to grant or deny validation for those passages; in other words, “nell’accedere alla lezione di G N occorre dunque esercitare una sorta di dubbio metodico, e validarne il responso caso per caso” (Zaccarello 2014, XCVI). M. Zaccarello : What’s in a Title | 73 This is consistent with the z-derived tradition, as G reads the same, but with the numeral expressed in letters and in a more linguistically plausible form: Proemio Delle Trecento novelle composte per Franco Sacchetti cittadino di Firenze (see Fig. 3). Figure 3. G, p. [1]. Figure 1. B, f. [1]r. Figure 2. L, f. [1]r. 74 | Textual Cultures 13.2 (2020) Since B and L seem to introduce a scribal innovation and are both commissioned by Vincenzio Borghini, one could legitimately suspect that the form Il Trecento Novelle (in split words) reflects the latter’s own use. However, Borghini consistently uses the linguistically neutral form witnessed by G. Consider the following examples (italics are always mine): a) In an autograph list of forms of lexical interest drawn from Sacchetti’s work, he writes: “Sopra il secondo volume delle 300 novelle composte da Franco Sacchetti, cominciato alla novella 140” (BNCF, II ii 8, c. 10r, second column).6 b) In a letter addressed to Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, attached to which Borghini sent a small selection of 11 novelle (to be possibly identified with MS BNCF, Filze Rinuccini 22), Borghini writes: “Io mando a V.E. Ill.ma le CCC° novelle di Franco Sacchetti o, per dir meglio, una parte”.7 c) In a list of lexical observations on 14th-century authors, he notes: “Le trecento novelle di Franco Sacchetti, che scrisse intorno al 1400 et è ragionevole scrittore, ma non perfetto, né interamente sicuro” (BNCF, II x 68, f. 2r). d) One of Borghini’s most famous books on philology and linguistics, the Annotazioni e discorsi sul Decameron (Firenze: Giunti, 1574), presents Sacchetti as an author who wrote “trecento novellette ovvero, per lo più, historie di casi seguiti” (in the previous manuscript version, c. 1572, the mention was clearer: “essendo vicino alla vecchiaia, per suo passatempo scrisse un libro di 300 novelle et più presto historie et casi per la maggior parte veri” (Chiecchi 2001, 38 and 252 respectively). To appreciate the examples cited above, it is worth noting that Borghini knew — in all likelihood — that the work was unfinished and Sacchetti must have written a far lesser number of stories: thus, the numeral trecento, 6. This example features a very common abbreviation in the initial preposition: “d(e)lle 300 novelle composte”, obtained with a short bar across (or beside) the upper side of the d. The lack of a similar one may account for the cited, odd form del

What’s in a Title: The Long-debated Question on the Title of Sacchetti’s Novelle