Giovanni Sercambi (1348 – 1424) was an Italian author from Lucca who wrote a history of his city, Le croniche di Luccha, as well as Il novelliere (or Novelle), a collection of 155 tales.

Biography

Of modest origins, Sercambi rose to become Gonfaloniere of Justice in 1400. He played a key role in the rise to power of Paolo Guinigi, who became the effective lord of Lucca on 21 November 1400 when he received the titles of Capitano e Difensore del Popolo. After Guinigi's fall in 1430, he found himself excluded from power and devoted himself to literature. He died in 1424, and was buried in the Chiesa di San Matteo.^[1]

Works

Sercambi composed Le croniche di Luccha from c. 1368 until his death from plague in 1424.^[2]

The unfinished Il novelliere has a frame story based on Boccaccio's Decameron, in which the storytellers flee the Lucca to avoid the plague of 1374.^[3] One of the stories, La novella d'Astolfo, is notable for showing parallels with the tale of Shahriyar and Shahzaman in the One Thousand and One Nights.^[4]

The eleventh story in Novelle is a variant of Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type 513A, "Six Go Through the Whole World".^[5]

References

Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Giovanni Sercambi.

• Mari, Fabrizio (2018). "SERCAMBI, Giovanni". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 92: Semino–Sisto IV (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
• Myriam Swennen Ruthenberg "Telling Lies, Telling Lives: Giovanni Sercambi Between Cronaca and Novella" in The Italian Novella, ed. Gloria Allaire (Western Michigan University Press, 2003)
• Robert Irwin The Arabian Nights: A Companion (Tauris Parkes Paperbacks, 2005)