Unnatural and degenerate: Cases of monstrous motherhood in Matteo Bandello’s Novelle (1554) and Geoffrey Fenton’s Tragicall Discourses (1567)

Abstract

The following article takes into consideration two cases of early modern female ‘monstrosity’ drawn from the Italian collection of Novelle published by Matteo Bandello in 1554. The events recount the stories of two mothers who, seized by ‘unnatural’ folly, kill in cold blood their own offspring. The article tackles the conflicting concepts of normality and malady, putting this ambiguous opposition in relation with the consequent translations of the Novelle in French and in English. The shifts that appear in the translations reveal a deep preoccupation with definitions of malady, be they physical or cultural. Through a close analysis of the original Italian text and its English rendition written by Geoffrey Fenton in 1567, this article sheds light on the troubled relationship of English translators with ‘Italianated’ thus ‘degenerate’ customs, and on their authorial and textual strategies to pre-empt the infectious potential of their Italian sources.