ABSTRACT
Although Italy has not bequeathed us the wealth of Arthurian literature that one can find in France and Germany, it has left us several jewels, such as the lengthy fourteenth-century La Tavola Ritonda (The Round Table), an elaborate retelling of the Tristan and Isolde love story in prose. Also, from about 1250 to 1500, there flourished a popular form of art known as the cantare or folk-ballad. These were narrative poems sung in the city squares about Arthurian and other themes. The compositions, whose music has not survived, were divided into 8-line stanzas (ottava rima) and were frequently rhymed abababcc.
