Article: `Occult' power: the politics of witchcraft and superstition in Renaissance Florence.

D.H. Lawrence introduced his translation of the last novella of Antonfrancesco Grazzini's collection Le cene by stating that it would be "difficult to find a work more typical of the times" (ix). Grazzini, a "typical Florentine" has written "this famous story ... a magnificent account of what is perhaps the best Florentine beffa, or burla (practical joke) on record" (x). Such enthusiasm is accompanied by Lawrence's effusively prejudiced view of Italians themselves--they are noted for their earthy wholesomeness--"the people remains the people, and wine and spaghetti are their forms of poetry: good forms, too" (xii). Italians, he maintains, have a long history of playing ...

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