Italian Folktales
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Sources
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Giovan Straparola
The impulse of collecting folk tales that was shown by the Grimms was not confined to Germany and their centuries time. In fact, the earliest literary collection of stories with a popular origin was made in the 1500s by an Italian, Giovan Francesco Straparola. He came from Caravaggio, a town halfway between Milan and Cremona. In 1550 Straparola published at Venice a collection of stories in the style of the Decameron. His collection "was received with the greatest favour. It passed through sixteen editions in twenty years, was translated into French and often printed in that language, and before the end of the century was turned into German." Straparola's tales were largely borrowed, yet, "to him belongs the honor of having introduced the Fairy Tale into modern European literature," informs Thomas Crane in the introduction to his collection.Giambattista Basile
About a century after Straparola the celebrated Pentamerone appeared at Naples in 1637. Its author, Giambattista Basile, is but little better known than Straparola. He spent his youth in Crete, became known to the Venetians, and roamed much over Italy, and finally returned to Naples. He died nearby in 1632. His Pentamerone is a collection of fifty stories in the Neapolitan dialect. Crane writes in his introduction: "Basile's work enjoyed the greatest popularity in Italy, and was translated into Italian and into the dialect of Bologna."It is also fit to mention that famous fairy tales of the French Perrault and Madame d'Alnou are of Italian origin.
In 1869 de Gubernatis published the Novelline di Santo Stefano, which contained thirty-five stories. This was the forerunner of many collections from the various provinces of Italy. Popular Italian tales do not differ much from those of the rest of Europe. The same story is found, with minor variations, all over Italy, Crane informs.
Good points by Anne MacDonell (Gleanings)
In Italy fairy-tales are loved not only by the children. Round the Italian peasant fireside, they still sit in the winter evenings after their work is done - men (some of them, at least), women and children, and tell and listen, and listen and tell, for hours together.As to the personages of the stories, the giants and wizards and witches can hold their own with those of any land. But Italian fairies have a habit of taking on quite ordinary shapes. A market-woman or a milkmaid you pass by thus makes travelling in Italy very interesting. You never know when you may meet a fairy.
And if all the tales be true, there is no end to the fairies' gratitude for good services. Sometimes they even reward you when you do them a good turn without meaning it.
Wise travellers in Italy have got the happiness-giving, old fairy-tales by heart, and therefore never pull long faces, nor give themselves airs when they meet the people of the country. For maybe the chambermaid may be a fairy, or the coachman, or the old woman by the church door. So they think - perhaps and perhaps not.
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Literature
Crane, Thomas Frederick. Italian Popular Tales Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1885. (A later edition: Thomas Frederick Crane, author, Jack Zipes, editor, Italian Popular Tales (Oxford University Press, 2003) — Thomas Frederick Crane (1844-1927) was one of the leading folklorists of the 1800s and a founder of the Journal of American Folklore. Jack Zipes is a professor of German at the University of Minnesota and has written extensively on folklore. Among the familiar tales in Crane's book are old versions of Cinderella, Snow White, Bluebeard and Puss in Boots.
Macdonell, Anne. The Italian Fairy Book. London: Unwin,1911.
Steedman, Amy. Legends and Stories of Italy for Children. London: T.C. and E.C. Jack, 1909 (?).
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