ABSTRACT
When faced with the work of Giovanni Sercambi (1348-1424), author of Le Croniche di Luccha and the 155 novellas in his incomplete Il Novelliere, any attempt to methodologically establish boundaries between different kinds of autobiography as made by Philippe Lejeune becomes problematic. 1 The quandary of approaching these two narratives as in part autobiographical is no different from that which Paul John Eakin contends with, though in a different context: “The endless debate among critics today about the definition of autobiography and the boundaries of fact and fiction reflects a fundamental uncertainty about the relationship between autobiographical narrative and the life it claims to record” (emphasis added). 2 It is precisely this relationship between autobiographical narrative and the life that asks to be recorded that haunts Giovanni Sercambi. At a time when the very notion of genre is only in an embryonic stage, the merchant-politician-chronicler-novellataore explores how narrative works to express autobiographical truth that for personal and political reasons cannot be recorded through the medium considered suitable for that purpose, the chronicle. Instead, he deems the cloak of fiction of the novella format more appropriate to expose the self that yearns to be expressed and recognized.
