Source Material
The vast majority of the stories derive from those Bandello heard from contemporaries, reported as real life events. Far more rarely, some stories are based on literary or historical sources, such as book 5 of Dante's Purgatory (part 1, story 11), the Lucretia and Tarquin episode in Livy's History of Rome (part 2, story 15), story #23 of the Heptameron (part 2, story 17), and Francesco Petrarch's Triumph of Love (part 2, story 41). Some derive from English history, such as the chronicle of Mary Douglas, niece to King Henry VIII of England (part 3, story 44) and Henry VIII's six wives (part 3, story 45), some from Spanish history, such as Alfonso X (part 4, story 10). All of them were told to him by men, but a minority of dedicatory prefaces are offered to women. Bandello writes that the dedicatory prefaces to the nobility or to worthy persons are useful to him as a shield in case someone becomes offended by one of the stories and is tempted to attack him (part 2, story 32). He shows psychological insight into jealousy, in particular the description of two types of jealous men, the first from feelings of inadequacy and the second from feelings of the fickleness of women (part 3, story 47).
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