This chapter examines the reception of romance in medieval Italy, focusing on the way in which Italian writers engaged with the form and content of the genre. It examines different modes of adaptation through the lens of three texts from different Italian-speaking communities and time periods. Firstly, the Franco-Venetian Prophecies de Merlin demonstrates the hybrid character of Italian romance, which combines French and Italian language and perspectives – in this case, to incorporate Italian interests in political prophecy into the Arthurian story. The Tuscan Tavola Ritonda characterizses Italian-vernacular adaptations of French prose cycles, combining ideals of chivalric heroism with civic values to resignify Tristan’s status as the perfect knight. Finally, the late medieval Ferrarese L’Inamoramento de Orlando by Matteo Maria Boiardo draws on the Italian cantari in its incorporation of romance themes and forms alongside chanson de geste. Italian medieval romance emerges as a malleable and porous genre that is always in dialogue with other genres and cultural perspectives.

Though it comprised the most circulated and consumed artefacts of the nineteenth-century literary marketplace, Gothic ‘street’ fiction nonetheless has occupied a critical blindspot in literary histories. Notwithstanding their evanescence, short, cheap Gothic works proliferated from the 1770s to the 1880s, appearing in millions of copies to satisfy the demands of a rapidly expanding reading public. This chapter explores the development of street literature, from its early, short bluebook format (1780–1830) to its later incarnation as the penny blood serial (1840–1870). The origins of street Gothic in prose forms and the print culture dynamics are considered, alongside close analysis of key themes, plots and tropes of the bluebooks and penny bloods. The chapter concludes by considering the twilight of street Gothic, with the emergence of the penny dreadful (1860–1900), which was aimed at a juvenile male audience. While literary scholarship has dismissed both as minor, derivative examples of Gothic literature, the chapter argues for the significant contribution made by a rich and dynamic network of authors and publishers.