XV. FICTION OF THE CENTURY.
Ordinarily it would be presumed that life was taken entirely too seriously during the Thirteenth Century for the generation to pay much attention to fiction. In a certain sense this is true. In the sense, however, that they had no stories worthy of the great literature in other departments it would be quite untrue. There is a naiveté about their story telling that rather amuses our sophisticated age, yet all the elements of our modern fiction are to be found in the stories that were popular during the century, and arranged with a dramatic effect that must have given them a wide appeal.
The most important contribution to the fiction of the century is to be found in the collection known as the Cento Novelle Antiche or "Hundred Ancient Tales," which contains the earliest prose fiction extant in Italian. Many of these come from a period anterior to Dante, and it is probable from what Manni, the learned editor of the Novelliero, says, that they were written out in the Thirteenth Century and collected in the early part of the Fourteenth Century. They did not all originate in Italy, and, indeed, Manni considers that most of them derived their origin from Provence. They represent the interest of the century in fiction and in anecdotal literature.
As for the longer fiction, the pure love story of the modern time, we have one typical example of it in that curious relic of the Middle Ages, "Aucassin and Nicolette." The manuscript which preserved this for us comes from the Thirteenth Century. Perhaps, as M. Paris suggests, the tale itself is from the preceding century. At least it was the interest of the Thirteenth Century in it that saved it for us. For those who think that the love romance in any of its features is novel, though we call it by that name, or that there has been any development of human nature which enables the writer of love stories to appeal to other and deeper, or purer and loftier feelings in his loved ones now than in the past, all that is needed, as it seems to me, is a casual reading of this pretty old song-story.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this oldest specimen of modern fiction is the number of precious bits of psychologic analysis or, at least, what is called that in the recent time, which occur in the course of it. For instance, when Aucassin is grieving because he cannot find Nicolette he wanders through the forest on horseback, and is torn by trees and brambles, but "he feels it not at all." On the other hand, when he finds Nicolette, though he is suffering from a dislocated shoulder, he no longer feels any pain in it, because of his joy at the meeting, and Nicolette (first aid to the injured) is able to replace the dislocated part without difficulty (the trained nurse in fiction) because he is so happy as not to notice the pain (psychotherapy). The herdsman whom he meets wonders that Aucassin, with plenty of money and victuals, should grieve so much over the loss of Nicolette, [{449}] while he has so much more cause to grieve over the loss of an ox, which means starvation to him. Toward the end of the story we have the scene in which Nicolette, stolen from home when very young, and utterly unable to remember anything about her childhood, has brought back to her memory by the view of the city of Carthage forgotten events of her childhood (subconscious memory). These represent naively enough, it is true, the study of the mind under varying conditions that has in recent years been given the rather ambitious name of psychology in fiction.