Abstract
This essay examines the various ways in which reading is depicted in Matteo Bandello’s Novelle. There are, in fact, various examples of well-read women and scenes dedicated to reading aloud present in Part 1 of his novellas; it is a composite space in which the conventional praise offered to the addressee in the dedicatory letter that precedes each novella intertwines with the context of the novella, its vibrant depiction of the courtly world and the metaliterary reflections of the author. The act of reading serves not only as a narrative device around which the courtly conversation revolves, but it also allows for a dialectical interaction between the text, the reader and the group of listeners, and thus represents an important tool for grasping the intertextual references, the range of sources and the topoi which Bandello looked to when writing the Novelle.
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