Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/128

118 from literature by the ruling art, and illustrates the Italian proclivity to identify the mind's eye with the body's, to turn the things of the intellect into objects of sense. This realism, too, is shown as continuously in the frequent lapsing of Pulci's story, for example, into undisguised burlesque, low comedy, and broad fun; and more subtly in the prevailing irony of Ariosto. The poems thus constructed were an acceptable, usually a high, mode of amusement; they interested the fancy, delighted the senses, and stirred laughter. The Italians of the Renaissance asked no more.

In the prose tales, of which so many were written after the model of Boccaccio, the absorption of interest in simple incident is more plain, and the presence of contemporary manners more manifest. Various as they are, including every rank of life in their characters, and every phase of action in their events, they all bear a family resemblance. They are for the most part comedies of intrigue, arresting attention by romantic or piquant situations; usually immoral, not infrequently obscene. The crafty seducer is the text, the fool of a husband the comment; and when the gloss is read,