YOUNG CORVETTO AND THE CANOPY BED SCANDAL

THIS POST IS A SEQUEL TO "SAVED FROM ARSENIC POISONING BY THE BELL!" IN WHICH, IN THE KINGDOM OF WIDE RIVER, YOUNG MANSERVANT CORVETTO SAVED HIS KING BENEDETTO FROM, OUI, CERTAIN ARSENIC POISONING - AND THE POISONER, A MARQUIS, SWALLOWED HIS OWN FIXED DRINK. OF COURSE HIS GRACE COULD NOT LEAVE THE LAD UNREWARDED AFTER SUCH A VALUABLE SERVICE TO THE CROWN...

This is a fragment from a retelling in Parcast Tales of a Pentamerone tale, "The Trials of Young Corvetto," so to picture yourself the fashion the characters are wearing and the artwork on the walls you must think mid-seventeenth century, Thirty-Years-War-era, in a Mediterranean heavily influenced by the Baroque and the Counter-Reformation.

Giambattista Basile became a courtier late in life (Count of Torone), after being most of his life a military officer. Though he was grateful for having to rest on his laurels, and for the patronage that allowed him to publish his tales and his sister Adriana to flourish as an opera singer (she also gleaned tales that are in the Pentamerone), stories like Corvetto's criticize the intrigue and politics of the royal palaces of his day, offering a glimpse of how jaded he was (compare H.C. Andersen's satirical depictions of courtly/royal life). The original Corvetto is littered with cynical asides lambasting political corruption. The original Corvetto opens thus: "Oh hapless the one who is condemned to live in that hell that goes by the name of court, where flattery is sold by the basket, malice and bad services measured by the quintal, and deceit and betrayal weighed by the bushel!"

"Aargh... Where did you learn to use your hands like this?" King Benedetto sighed as Corvetto kneaded the muscles of his back.

Corvetto's eyes were drawn to old battle scars criss-crossing the king's olive skin. Before the servant could ask, the king chuckled.

"Ha, ha, ha! Never be afraid to ask a warrior how he got his scars...We are the world's greatest sculptors, but we work in flesh, rather than marble. Our bodies are masterpieces."

Stories and ballads have been known to exaggerate the appearance of monarchs. Not so with the King of Wide River. Even when lying down, he was striking. And Corvetto could not help but agree that his body was a work of art. Still, the young man did not flatter or agree. Instead, he said:

"Your Grace, it has been some time since you drove the ogres from this land. Does a warrior's pride fade with age?"

Benedetto rolled over, forcing Corvetto to release his back.

"You're a clever one, Corvetto. But you have much to learn about what makes a king. Time passes, but there's still singing ballads about my deeds."

The conversation came to an end moments later, when one of the king's servants announced a visitor. Benedetto stood and covered himself with a cloak. Corvetto stepped out of the chamber and passed by two figures in jewelled robes, standing in the hallway: a man and a woman. The man had a thin skull-like face, with eyes set into their sockets like dull marbles. This was Viscount Niballo, one of the most influential men in the court. Standing at his side was a tall woman with hazelnut hair; Marchesa Agnella. She stared at Corvetto the same way one might look at a brown stain on a bedspread. Without a word, the two courtiers swept into the chamber.

Corvetto stood in the empty hallway for a moment, unsure of where to go. The rest of the court at the Palace of Wide River hated him, and, at first, he didn't understand why. He hadn't said anything rude or insulted the king. It took almost a year for Corvetto to understand. They hated him not because of anything he did, but because they had spent their lives toiling to be the king's most trusted ally, a position Corvetto had earned in a fraction of the time. It wasn't long before he started to notice traps laid for him around the palace. Just the other day he'd found a woman! The wife of a nobleman, waiting in his chambers, to ravish him! A naked ploy in both senses of the term... She'd clearly been hired to seduce him and cause a scandal. He paid her twice her fee to get rid of her.  

Not all the traps were so direct. Messages to him were intercepted, his garments were cut in compromising places, his chamber pot went neglected, and these tricks may have worked on a nobleman, but they would not work on a young man who grew dodging thieves, cutpurses, and con artists.

Corvetto was summoned back to the king's chambers shortly after his brush with the two courtiers. Upon entering, he noticed a change in Benedetto's expression. The king looked... eager. The viscount and the marchesa flanked him like gargoyles, eyes glinting wickedly. The king said:

"My dear Corvetto! I've just been given the most wonderful idea!"

SAVED FROM ARSENIC POISONING BY THE BELL!

This is a fragment from a retelling in Parcast Tales of a Pentamerone tale, "The Trials of Young Corvetto," so to picture yourself the fashion the characters are wearing and the artwork on the walls you must think mid-seventeenth century, Thirty-Years-War-era, in a Mediterranean heavily influenced by the Baroque and the Counter-Reformation.

Giambattista Basile became a courtier late in life (Count of Torone), after being most of his life a military officer. Though he was grateful for having to rest on his laurels, and for the patronage that allowed him to publish his tales and his sister Adriana to flourish as an opera singer (she also gleaned tales that are in the Pentamerone), stories like Corvetto's criticize the intrigue and politics of the royal palaces of his day, offering a glimpse of how jaded he was (compare H.C. Andersen's satirical depictions of courtly/royal life). The original Corvetto is littered with cynical asides lambasting political corruption. The original Corvetto opens thus: "Oh hapless the one who is condemned to live in that hell that goes by the name of court, where flattery is sold by the basket, malice and bad services measured by the quintal, and deceit and betrayal weighed by the bushel!"

There was no greater honour than a banquet invitation from the King of Wide River. Minor nobles sold their family heirlooms to afford the most expensive jewels and gowns. Commoners trained their sons to be the best cupbearers, in the hope that they would find themselves even serving at such an occasion! This pleased King Benedetto to no end. The members of his court bustled to and fro before him, a shifting rainbow of priceless fabric. Compliments poured in his ear from every angle, praising his kingdom as a vast improvement from the ogre tyrants that once ruled over this land.

Benedetto called out for another glass of wine. Before the servants could stir, the nobles tripped over themselves to fulfil the king's request. A goblet reached him, filled to the brim. He grinned, and raised his hand to drink... but someone seized his wrist. (GASPS FROM EVERYONE)

The chamber fell silent. Benedetto looked up in shock. It was a young servant! A tangle of dark brown hair poked from beneath his cap. His amber eyes were locked on the king, but not in fear... Before Benedetto could have him reprimanded, the young man said:

"Your Majesty, do not drink from this cup. The wine has been poisoned."

Benedetto snorted.

"Ha! Is that so? What makes you, a common boy, so certain of this?"

The young man replied:

"With all due respect, Your Grace, noble men and women grow up learning the intricacies of court life. Table manners, proper honorifics... So too does a common boy learn how to spot deadly intent in a crowd."

The youth pointed to a man, a red-faced marquis, keeping to the edge of the crowd. At the king's command, guards dragged the sweating nobleman forward. Without a word, the king handed him the cup. The man drank... and vomited blood all over the king's shoes. He dropped to the floor, convulsing and uttering half-choked curses. When he fell still, the king raised his eyes back to the young man.

"What is your name, clever servant?"

A wry grin spread across the young man's face.

"They call me... Corvetto."

TAPROOT TEXTS, DEFINED

If ever there was a taproot text – in John Clute’s terms, a fantasy that branches out into a thousand other fantasies – this is it (referring to the Curdie and Irene diptych by George MacDonald).
Unknown lecturer, Glasgow University (2010s).

Encyclopedia of Fantasy (John Clute, 1997)
Taproot Texts

Only in the last decades of the 18th century, when (at least in the West) a Horizon of Expectations emerged among writers and readers, did a delimitable genre now called Speculative Fiction (Fantasy, Science Fiction, etc.) appear. Before that there were writings which included the Fantastic – and such works can be described as taproot texts. To exemplify: The presence of the sylph Ariel and of Prospero's staff in William Shakespeare's The Tempest (performed circa 1611; 1623) do not make that play a fantasy or spec-fic, according to this criterion; The Tempest, however defined generically, may contain elements of the fantastic, but these elements did not govern its audience's sense of its generic nature: it was, first and foremost, a theatrical play. On the other hand, Goethe's Faust (1808) clearly reveals its author's consciousness that he is transforming a traditional story containing supernatural elements into a work mediated through – and in a telling sense defined by – those elements. For our purposes, The Tempest is best conceived as a Taproot Text and Faust as a proper fantasy.

The notion of the Taproot Text seems necessary – or at least desirable – for at least two reasons. The first is that a Water Margin of not easily definable intentions marks what we may now read as an irreversible impulse towards fantasy and proto-science-fiction. over the last decades of the 18th century, and it seems advisable to have a blanket term available to use in order to distinguish relevant texts composed or written before those we can legitimately call fantasy or science fiction. The second is that, because almost any form of tale written before the rise of the mimetic novel could be retroactively conceived as ur- or proto-fantasy (or ur-/proto-sci-fi, etc.), it seems highly convenient to apply to works from this Ocean of Story a term – i.e., "taproot" – which emphasizes the heightened significance of the text mentioned. When we refer to a text as a TT, in other words, we describe one that contains a certain mix of ingredients and stands out for various reasons – not excepting quality.

The list of Taproot Texts, therefore, may be long, but it is by no means endless; and a clear degree of qualitative judgement will be apparent in any individual cataloguing. Beyond those already mentioned, some other texts seem to fit the taxonomical needs for which the term was devised.

Relevant texts from classical literature include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (composed by the 8th century BC); Hesiod's Theogony (composed 8th century BC), Aesop's Fables (composed before 560BC) (> Aesopian Fantasy); certain works of the Greek playwrights, like Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound (produced before 456BC) and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (produced before 406BC); Ovid's Metamorphoses (circa AD1), Lucius Apuleius's The Golden Jackass (before AD155) and most of the surviving works of Lucian of Samosata.

Relevant early modern texts (from the turn of the Renaissance onwards) include Dante's The Divine Comedy (before 1321), Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (before 1353), the various Chivalric Romances and epics that mass together around the Matters of Britain (Arthurian cycle) and France (Carolingian cycle), including works like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (written circa 1370) (> Gawain) and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (1485) ed Thomas Caxton, some episodes of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (before 1400), Luigi Pulci's The Greater Morgante (1470; exp 1483), Orlando Innamorato (1487) by Matteo Maria Boiardo (1434-1494), Lodovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516), François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-1564), the Nights (1550-1553) of Gianfrancesco Straparola, Luis de Camoes's The Lusiads (1572), Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1581), Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590-1596), Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus (written circa 1588), A Midsummer Night's Dream (performed circa 1595; 1600) and other Shakespeare plays, Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605-1615), the Pentamerone (1634-1636) of Giambattista Basile, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) (>>> Pilgrim's Progress), Charles Perrault's Tales of Times Past or of Mother Goose (coll 1697), the various versions of The 1001 Nights (> Arabian Fantasy), Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714) and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). The list could be considerably extended, but there is a distinction to be made: huge quantities of work can be treated as being of backdrop interest only; these titles cannot.