ABSTRACT
Prose, too - in the form of risque anecdote, piquant gossip and sensational disclosure - drew its material knowingly from the margins of the sodalorder. In addition, prose was less regulated by rules or traditional generie categories than lyrie or epie verse; and this itself was significant in an age when connections might be drawn in terms of literary decorum between social considerations and considerations of literary genre. The last story of the Decameron is translated into a Dutch version for the stage. Rojas's work whieh is usually known as La Celestina is an extended prose novella written in dialogue-form with clear Boccaccian affinities. In Cervantes, an ability to offer in prose a burlesque version of most of the genres that were central in the Renaissance canon - epic, romance, lyric, pastoral leads the author to a profoundly humane understanding of the motives and unexpected consequences that often lie hidden beneath the codes of his native culture.
