Pentamerone
The Pentamerone, subtitled Lo cunto de li cunti ("The Tale of Tales"), is a seventeenth-century Neapolitan fairy tale collection by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile.
Background
The stories in the Pentamerone were collected by Basile and published posthumously in two volumes by his sister Adriana in Naples, Italy, in 1634 and 1636 under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis. These stories were later adapted by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, the latter making extensive, acknowledged use of Basile's collection. Examples of this are versions of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel.
While other collections of stories have included stories that would be termed fairy tales, his work is the first collection in which all the stories fit in that single category.[1] He did not transcribe them from the oral tradition as a modern collector would, instead writing them in Neapolitan, and in many respects was the first writer to preserve oral intonations.[2]
The style of the stories is heavily Baroque, with many metaphorical usages.[3]
This has been interpreted as a satire on Baroque style, but as Basile praised the style, and used it in his other works, it appears to have no ironic intention.[4]
Influence
Although the work fell into obscurity, the
This collection (Basile's Pentamerone) was for a long time the best and richest that had been found by any nation. Not only were the traditions at that time more complete in themselves, but the author had a special talent for collecting them, and besides that an intimate knowledge of the dialect. The stories are told with hardly any break, and the tone, at least in the Neapolitan tales, is perfectly caught.... We may therefore look on this collection of fifty tales as the basis of many others; for although it was not so in actual fact, and was indeed not known beyond the country in which it appeared, and was never translated into French, it still has all the importance of a basis, owing to the coherence of its traditions. Two-thirds of them are, so far as their principal incidents are concerned, to be found in Germany, and are current there at this very day. Basile has not allowed himself to make any alteration, scarcely even any addition of importance, and that gives his work a special value – Wilhelm Grimm
Basile's writing inspired Matteo Garrone's 2015 film, The Tale of Tales.[6]
Geography of the stories
The tales of Giambattista Basile are set in
Synopsis
The name of the Pentamerone comes from
This frame story in itself is a fairy tale,
The now-pregnant slave-princess demands (at the impetus of Zoza's fairy gifts) that her husband tell her stories, or else she would crush the unborn child. The husband hires ten female storytellers to keep her amused; disguised among them is Zoza. Each tells five stories, most of which are more suitable to courtly, rather than juvenile, audiences. The Moorish woman's treachery is revealed in the final story (related, suitably, by Zoza), and she is buried, pregnant, up to her neck in the ground and left to die. Zoza and the Prince live happily ever after.
Many of these fairy tales are the oldest known variants in existence.[8]
The fairy tales are:
- The First Day
-
- "The Tale of the Ogre"
- "The Myrtle"
- "Peruonto" - connected to Russian tale "At the Pike's Behest" ("Emelian the Fool")
- "Vardiello"
- "The Flea"
- "Cenerentola" – translated into English as Cinderella
- "The Merchant"
- "Goat-Face"
- "The Enchanted Doe" - a variant of The Knights of the Fish
- "The Flayed Old Lady" - variant of The King Who Would Have a Beautiful Wife
- The Second Day
-
- "Parsley" – a variant of Rapunzel
- "Green Meadow" - variant of The Bird Lover
- "Violet"
- "Pippo" – a variant of Puss In Boots
- "The Snake"
- "The She-Bear" – a variant of Allerleirauh
- "The Dove" – a variant of The Master Maid
- "The Young Slave" – a variant of Snow White
- "The Padlock"
- "The Buddy"
- The Third Day
-
- "Cannetella"
- "Penta of the Chopped-off Hands" – a variant of The Girl Without Hands
- "Face"
- "Sapia Liccarda"
- "The Cockroach, the Mouse, and the Cricket" - variant of The Princess Who Never Smiled
- "The Garlic Patch"
- "Corvetto"
- "The Booby"
- "Rosella"
- "The Three Fairies" – a variant of Frau Holle
- The Fourth Day
-
- "The Stone in the Cock's Head"
- "The Two Brothers"
- "The Three Enchanted Princes"
- "The Seven Little Pork Rinds" – a variant of The Three Spinners
- "The Dragon"
- "The Three Crowns"
- "The Two Cakes" – a variant of Diamonds and Toads
- "The Seven Doves" – a variant of The Seven Ravens
- "The Raven" – a variant of Trusty John
- "Pride Punished" – a variant of King Thrushbeard
- The Fifth Day
-
- "The Goose"
- "The Months"
- "Pintosmalto" – a variant of Mr Simigdáli
- "The Golden Root" – a variant of Cupid and Psyche
- "Sun, Moon, and Talia" – a variant of Sleeping Beauty
- "Sapia"
- "The Five Sons"
- "Nennillo and Nennella" – a variant of Brother and Sister
- "The Three Citrons" – a variant of The Love for Three Oranges
Translations
The text was translated into German by
Adaptations
The 2015 Italian film Tale of Tales, directed by Matteo Garrone, is generally based on stories from the collection, starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel and Toby Jones as protagonists of the tales "The Enchanted Doe", "The Flayed Old Lady" and "The Flea", respectively.[6]
References
- ^ Croce 2001, p. 879.
- ^ Croce 2001, pp. 880–881.
- ^ Croce 2001, p. 881.
- ^ Croce 2001, p. 882.
- ^ Croce 2001, pp. 888–889.
- ^ a b Vivarelli 2014.
- ISBN 0-313-25961-5.
- ^ Swann Jones 1995, p. 38.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-393-97636-6.
- Swann Jones, Steven (1995). The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination. New York: Twayne. ISBN 978-0-8057-0950-6.
- Vivarelli, Nick (15 May 2014). "Cannes: Italo Auteur Matteo Garrone Talks About His 'Tale of Tales' (Exclusive)". Variety. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
Further reading
- Basile, Giambattista (2007). Giambattista Basile's "The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones". Translated by Nancy L. Canepa, illustrated by Carmelo Lettere, foreword by Jack Zipes. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-2866-8.
- Canepa, Nancy L. (1999). From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile's "Lo cunto de li cunti" and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-2758-6.
- Albanese, Angela, Metamorfosi del Cunto di Basile. Traduzioni, riscritture, adattamenti, Ravenna, Longo, 2012.
- Maggi, Armando (2015). Preserving the Spell: Basile's "The Tale of Tales" and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-Tale Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-24296-5.
- Hurbánková, Šárka. (2018). "G. B. Basile and Apuleius: First literary tales. morphological analysis of three fairytales". In: Graeco-Latina Brunensia. 23: 75–93. 10.5817/GLB2018-2-6.
- Praet, Stijn. "“Se lieie la favola”: Apuleian Play in Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti". In: International Journal of the Classical Tradition 25: 315–332 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-017-0454-6
External links
- Zipes, Jack (2002). "Pentamerone". The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. ISBN 978-0-19-860509-6. Retrieved 17 September 2023.
- "La vita di Giambattista Basile" (in Italian)
- The complete text of Lo cunto de li cunti (in Neapolitan)
- Works by Giambattista Basile at Project Gutenberg
- Illustrations by Warwick Goble
- Illustrations Archived 2011-05-14 at the Wayback Machine by George Cruikshank
- Professor S. Cicciotti's page about G. B. Basile (in Italian)
- Online text of some stories, in English (from Taylor translation)