Excerpt from Italian Romance Writers An attempt to retrace modern romance through story, tale, fable, epic, ballad, and legend to its earliest origines in the dawn of civilization is outside the purpose of this work. Indeed, from the earliest imaginative narrative down to the tales of Daphnis and Chloe and of the Golden Ass, there was no real prototype of our novel. Doubtless the romance of the European Middle Ages, with its stories of chivalry and tales of love and adventure, was foreshadowed by the Greek and Latin epics. Those stories of the wanderings of Ulysses and of AEneas, of the siege of Troy, and of the search for the Golden Fleece. Doubtless also the Milesian Tales, recounting chiefly love in its grosser form, were the precedents of the Italian novelle and French fabliaux and chansons de geste. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."