Collection Frame stories

Huck

The character of a frame story - as it is generally understood - is given at ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_story
... which notes the begin of the Frame story development with ...

The earliest known frame stories can be traced back to ancient India sometime in the first millennium BCE, when the Sanskrit epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, Vishnu Sarma's Panchatantra, Syntipas' The Seven Wise Masters, and the fable collections Hitopadesha and Vikram and The Vampire were written. This form gradually spread west through the centuries and became popular, giving rise to such classic frame tale collections as the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), The Decameron, and Canterbury Tales.

Now I'm interested NOT in the generally frame stories, but frame stories, which somehow are interesting in matters of Tarot history research. I've given two examples recently, the "Seven Sages of Rome" ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=162962
... and with the 20/21 women in Pierre Le Moyne's "Femmes fortes" ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=162795

The "seven sages", which have survived in different traditions, split in various versions, which are grouped in Eastern and Western versions, and the Eastern seems to have formed 2 major patterns, a longer and a shorter:

1. Western version with 15 stories, but likely based on a scheme with 16 elements
2. Eastern (1) normal version ("7 veziers", based on c. 21 stories, but likely based on a scheme with 22 elements
3. Eastern (2) "Sindibad" version, which has 30 stories, but likely based on a scheme with 32 elements and specifically based on the scheme, as it is known as "32 ways of wisdom" in Sepher Yetzirah. In this version the 22 elements (Eastern 1, normal version) are embedded in the teaching of the pupil by Sindibad (begin of text, 3 stories) and the expanded successful defense of the pupil (6 stories, end of text).

In the French example of Pierre Le Moyne he uses 20 female figures of the past in a 4x5 scheme (5 Jews, 5 Barbars, 5 Romans, 5 Christians) and the whole has less the character of a "Frame story" in the classical sense, but the author organizes his work in a mathematical pattern ... and there's the relationship to playing card decks.

Playing card decks naturally use a mathematical form, mostly it could be addressed by a simple matrix. The most usual form is the 4x13-deck, 4 suits with 13 cards. The suits are describable with 10+3, 10 number cards and 3 court cards ... without any view at the iconographic content (which is a variable in endless forms). Tarot decks are a little more complicated, cause the 5th "Trump" suit is different in number than the other 4 suits: so 4x14+22 designs an abstract Tarot deck without any fixed iconographic content.

As we're in search for comparable objects to the Trionfi card and Tarot development, we're natural interested in Frame books with an recognizable mathematical pattern ... it's better, if the used pattern relates to a game ... and it's best, if the pattern relates to a game pattern used in the Tarot and Trionfi development.

You think, that there are none with this quality ... ? ... of course there are. Here ... in short form ... are two of them:

"Il Novellino" by Masucchio (published 1476)
http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/pdf/Volume_3/t56.pdf

50 chapters with erotic stories of the Naples region, written by the secretary of condottiero Roberto Sanseverino (1476 in the service of Milan), who helped in the publication after the author had died. One of the stories became the plot for Shakespeare's "Romeo and Julia". The chapters are sorted in 5 groups with 10 stories each as the ...
Mantegna Tarocchi (5x10-scheme)
http://trionfi.com/mantegna/
... from which Trionfi.com assumes, that it was formed with 50 elements in 1474/75. So we've a synchron phenomenon between the both, which often leads to the successful finding, that both productions were "somehow" related and happened not accidental at the same moment.

Similar related seems to be the Pentamerone (1633)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Basile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentamerone
Il Pentamerone del cavalier Giovan Battista Basile:
overo, Lo cunto de li cunte, trattenemiento de li peccerille di Gian Alesio Abbattutis..
http://books.google.com/books?id=FIUHAAAAQAAJ&dq=Pentamerone&source=gbs_navlinks_s
... which is a fairy tale collection with the meta story, that 10 women in 5 nights tell 50 stories (so again the 5x10-scheme). This again is embedded in a meta-meta story ...

How the story began ...
http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/stories/pent01.html (begin) ...
and the plot in short:
The frame-story is that of a cursed, melancholy princess named Zoza ("mud" or "slime" in Neapolitan, but also used as a term of endearment). She can not laugh, whatever her father does to amuse her, so he sets up a fountain of oil by the door, thinking people slipping in the oil would make her laugh. An old woman tried to gather oil, a page boy broke her jug, and the old woman grew so angry that she danced about, and Zoza laughed at her. The old woman cursed her to marry only the Prince of Round-Field, whom she could only wake by filling a pitcher with tears in three days. With some aid from fairies, who also give her gifts, Zoza found the prince and the pitcher, and nearly filled the pitcher when she fell asleep. A Moorish slave steals it, finishes filling it, and claims the prince.
...
The now-pregnant slave-queen demands (at the impetus of Zoza's fairy gifts) that her husband tell her stories, or else she would crush the unborn child. The husband hires ten female storytellers to keep her amused; disguised among them is Zoza. Each tells five stories — most of which are more suitable to courtly than juvenile audiences. The Moorish woman's treachery is revealed in the final story (related, suitably, by Zoza), and she is buried, pregnant, up to her neck in the ground and left to die. Zoza and the Prince live happily ever after.

Basile's stories became of importance for Charles Perrault ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault
Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood) and La Barbe bleue (Bluebeard). Perrault's stories continue to be printed and have been adapted to opera, ballet (for example, Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty), theatre, and film.

... and later the brothers Grimm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_and_Household_Tales
800px-1000_DM_Serie4_Vorderseite.jpg


As Masucchio's 50 stories were from Naples, and Basile also had been of Naples, there are good chances, that Masucchio's work influenced Basile.
But generally these constructions based on "10 story-tellers" are related to the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, written in 1350/51 after the big plague: In the meta story 10 persons (3 men and 7 women) attempt to escape the plague, gather at the church ... and flee to a villa near Florence in Fiesole (Fiesole has a major importance for Boccaccio anyway).
There each of the speakers tells one story in each night from Monday till Friday (Saturday and Sunday are holidays). So "10 days" make 100 stories and two weeks.

800px-Santa_Maria_Novella.jpg

So at a Tuesday morning after Divine Service in the venerable church of Santa Maria Novella seven girls met and decided to look up a safer place ...

800px-Florenz-Fiesole_Theater.jpg

... in Fiesole, in 8 km distance to Florence.

******************

This might be enough as examples, what I would understood as "Frame stories with some relevance to Tarot and Game history research".

If any reader is aware of such texts, I would be enjoyed, if he/she would leave a note here. Thanks.