Il contadino ladro. Sfumature di una figura letteraria bassomedievale

The first aim of the article is to trace the roots of the Italian literary commonplace of the robber-peasant (widely spread during the XIVXV centuries) in the French literature of the previous period. Evidence are adduced, for example, by \uc9tienne de Foug\ue8res\u2019 Livre des mani\ue8res and by the fabliaux literary genre. The second point is to stress the differences between the robber-peasant image depicted by the Tuscan sources on one hand and by the Po Valley texts on the other. The robber-peasant coming out from the Po valley literature seems to be a common thief, who steals fruits or animals from his landlord\u2019s properties; instead, the Tuscan peasant is usually a crafty sharecropper, who repeatedly tries to cheat the landowner when the time comes to share the crops, in order to get something more than the half of the products. Furthermore, the target of the Tuscan peasants\u2019 literary complaints is the oppressive sharecropping contract, while in the Po Valley the most common targets are heavy taxes and corrupted public officials. These differences could be interpreted as literary reflections of the different living and working conditions of peasants in the two areas, in Tuscany early and more characterized by sharecropping relationships than in the other, especially if we consider the low plain regions near the Po course