Content area
Full text
The Cronaca di Partenope: An Introduction to and Critical Edition of the First Vernacular History of Naples, ed. Sa m ant h a Kelly. Leiden: Brill, 2010. 364 pp.
Samantha Kelly's new edition of The Cronaca di Partenope is a welcome addition to the scholarship on vernacular chronicles and medieval folk narrative. The Cro- naca purports to be a history of Naples from its ancient origins to 1343, but it tells the story, as the back cover accurately says, with "a healthy dose of legend."
The introduction to the Cronaca provided in this edition consists of five chapters of what Kelly describes as 'Preliminary Matter'. The first of these chapters is a general introduction to the Cronaca that explains its significance as a source of Neapolitan history and mentality. Kelly does not see it as a source for the factual history of Naples; as she writes, "The Cronaca di Partenope is of very little use for reconstructing the events of Neapolitan history. The bulk of its narrative concerns the distant past...