Abstract

The Italian edition of the work by Eleazar M. Meletinsky on the historical poetics of the novella - recently edited and translated by M. Bonafin and L. Sestri - gives us the opportunity to revise the theoretical model by which the Russian scholar explained the origins of this narrative genre in Europe and Asia from various folkloric forms, i.e. myth, fairy and realistic tale, anecdote: in particular the analysis is carried out through the comparison with the similar reflections on novel and epic available in other Meletinsky's books and with the theory of the "converging streams" developed by A.N. Veselovsky. Some corrections to the model of historical poetics are proposed, in order to conciliate typology and contingent elements, poetics and philology.