Giambattista Basile's "The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones" (Fairy-Tale Studies) [Paperback]

Giambattista Basile (Author), Carmelo Lettere (Illustrator), Nancy L. Canepa (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0814328660 | ISBN-13: 978-0814328668

The Tale of Tales, made up of forty-nine fairy tales within a fiftieth frame story, contains the earliest versions of celebrated stories like Rapunzel, All-Fur, Hansel and Gretel, The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. The tales are bawdy and irreverent but also tender and whimsical, acute in psychological characterization and encyclopedic in description. They are also evocative of marvelous worlds of fairy-tale unreality as well as of the everyday rituals of life in seventeenth-century Naples. Yet because the original is written in the nonstandard Neopolitan dialect of Italian and last translated fully into English in 1932 this important piece of Baroque literature has long been inaccessible to both the general public and most fairy-tale scholars

Editorial Reviews

Review

Nancy Canepa s translation of Basile s Lo cunto de li cunti makes a truly significant contribution to fairy-tale studies in the English-reading world. --Cristina Bacchilega, author of Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies and professor of English at University of Hawai i at Mãnoa

With stories marked by vertiginous fantasy, spirited wit, and baroque excess, Basile redefined the fairy tale for European audiences. Nancy Canepa s splendid new translation captures all the narrative energy and stylistic élan of The Tale of Tales and ensures that this collection will finally receive the attention it deserves. --Maria Tatar, John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and author of The Hard Facts of the Grimms Fairy Tales and Off With Their Heads!

About the Author

Nancy L. Canepa is associate professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth College.

Product Details

• Paperback: 494 pages
• Publisher: Wayne State Univ Pr (April 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814328660
• ISBN-13: 978-0814328668
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #410,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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