contained sonnets, strambotti (satirical verse), epistre (epistles), and capitoli (satirical poetry). It was reprinted in 1515. The Facetious Nights In 1551, also in Venice, Straparola published the first volume of his Le Piacevoli Notti Di M. Giovanfrancesco Straparola da Caravaggio, which is often translated as The Pleasant Nights or The Facetious Nights, the second volume of this work appearing in 1553. The Pleasant Nights is the work for which Straparola is most noted, and which contains a total of seventy-five short stories, fables, and fairy tales (Straparola 1894, vol.1 has 25; vol. 2 has 50). The tales, or novelle, are divided into Nights, rather than chapters, and resemble the type of narrative presentation found in Boccaccio's Decameron (1350–52). This presentation is of a gathering of Italian aristocrats, men and women, who entertain themselves by singing songs, dancing, and telling stories, The Pleasant Nights having added enigmas (riddles). [Compare Boccaccio 2010 with Straparola 1894.] One story in the second book of The Pleasant Nights, "The Tailor's Apprentice" or "Maestro Lattantio and His Apprentice Dionigi" (Straparola 1984 vol. 2, 102–110.), was removed a few years after first appearing in the second volume due to Church influence, while the entire collection entered a number of Indexes of prohibited books between 1580 and 1624. It is claimed that many of the stories in The Pleasant Nights had been taken from earlier works, specifically from Girolamo Morlini, a 15th/16th century lawyer from Naples whose Novellae, fabulae, comoedia appeared in 1520. Today, in at least one instance, the name of Girolamo Morlini has been associated in print with The Facetious Nights. If taken at his word, Straparola never denied this. In the Dedication at the front of the second volume, Straparola wrote that the stories ". . . written and collected in this volume [vol. 2 only?] are none of mine, but goods which I have feloniously taken from this man and that. Of a truth I confess they are not mine, and if I said otherwise I should lie, but nevertheless I have faithfully set them down according to the manner in which they were told by the ladies, nobles, learned men and gentlemen who gathered together for recreation." Zipes even mentioned at one time that "Straparola was not an original writer." It was often the case in Renaissance Italy that the use of the "frame tale" allowed an author to dodge some of the