SOURCE: "James Hinton and Ser Giovanni," Modern Philology, Vol. XV, No. 4, August, 1917, pp. 203-09.

In the following essay, Hinton offers summaries of several Medieval tales of chivalry in order to refute the once widely held belief that Map's story "De Rollone et eius uxore" was published during his lifetime and was also the source of a later Italian novella.

Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium contains only one story which has been claimed as the source of a later piece of mediaeval fiction. A peculiar interest naturally attaches to that story, "De Rollone et eius uxore," which is found in Distinctio III, cap. v, of Map's book.¹ This interest is heightened as a consequence of proof, which I have recently advanced,² that the De Nugis was never really completed and published by its author, but survives, in a unique manuscript, only by a lucky chance. It is therefore fitting...