Appunti sulla circolazione delle prose arturiane in Italia settentrionale tra Due e Trecento: tradizioni illustrative e livelli di lettura

A close look at the manuscripts of Arthurian prose novels as they circulated in northern Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries enables an analysis of how these books were decorated and how this relates to their geographic movement. The elements of continuity and fracture imbedded in tradition show that the illustration cycles had a double function closely related to the reception of the material. The iconographic formulas common to all the manuscripts considered here can be explained by distinct reading modes, which, in turn, depended of the specificity and ideological values of the narrative structures of the Arthurian prose novel. At the same time, the variations these formulas underwent in each manuscript were the result of reading skills, which differed according to the category of readers and which were founded on distinct idealizations of the Arthurian imaginary.