The Miramare Castle
Italian tales is the common denomination given to those tales collected from Italy, usually by Italian authors and written in Italian or some of its dialects.
History[]
16th and 17th Century[]
Italy is the country in which two of the first European fairy tale collections were published. The first one, The Facetious Nights, by Gianfrancesco Straparola, had its first volumen published in Venice in 1550, and the second one five years latter, in 1555, adding a total of 75 tales. The second one, Il Pentamerone, by Neapolitan author Giambattista Basile, written in the Neapolitan dialect, was also published in two volumes, the first one in 1634 and the second on 1636, althought it has less tales, only 50. Following the tradition of previous stories's collections such as Bocaccio's Decamerone, both Straparola's Basile's works used a framed story in which the rest of the tales were told. But, while Straparola's story was quite simple, in Basile's the frame story is as fantastical as the tales are told inside of it, telling the adventures of the princess Zoza, who after searching for the enchanted prince Tadeo she uses the tales as a opportunity to unmask the slave who took credit for breaking the spell Tadeo was under.
Both collections will be incredibly influential inside and outside Italy, and its influence can be already appreciated by the numbers of retellings of their tales the French fairy tale writers of the 17th century did of them. Of the eight tales included in the book Histoires ou contes du temps passé, written by French author Charles Perrault, at least two of them are direct retellings of two Basile's tales. The first one, Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, retells the story of Sun, Moon and Talia, although omitting the most controversial aspects from Basile's tale like the king rapping the princess and getting her pregnant while she's still asleep, and the King's jealous wife trying to get latter revenge on her husband going after the princess and her two children, as well as borrowing the scene of the angry fairy cursing the little princess at her baptism from The Young Slave, another Basile's tale. Same case with Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper, a direct retelling of Basile's La gatta cenerentola, omitting once again the most controversial of the story, like the heroine killing her stepmother so her mistress can marry her father. Master Cat or Puss 'n Boots is a retelling of stories that were both in Straparola's and Basile's collections, telling the story of a commoner youth who gets to marry a princess thanks to his cunning talking cat. Finally, despite not being directly based on Basile's tales, both Little Thumbling and The Fairies borrow for them, Little Thumbling from Nennillo and Nennella and The Fairies from The Three Fairies and The Two Cakes.
But despite how huge of an influence Basile was on Perrault's works, most French authors seemed more fond of Straparola, judging by the number of retellings they wrote. Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy's tales The Dolphin, Prince Wild Boar and La princesse Belle Étoile et le prince Chéri are direct retellings of Straparola's Peter the Fool, The Pig King and The Green Beaubird respectively, although some elements from Basile's tales can be found on Aulnoy's tales, such as The Hind in the Woods, in which we found once again the angry fairy cursing the princess at her baptism, and The White Cat, in which the princess' backstory of how she became enchanted is similar to the story of Petrosinella. This last one tale was also a possible inspiration to Charlotte Rose de la Force for her tale Persinette, although once the prince enters the scene each tales takes a very different path. Henriette-Julie de Murat also wrote her own take on Straparola's The Pig King, and Jean de Mailly did the same with Straparola's Guerrino and the Savage Man and Biancabella and the Snake; and Eustache Le Noble with The Green Beaubird.
18th Century[]
The most relevant figure of the 18th Century in Italy when it comes to fairy tales is, without a doubt, the Dalmatian playwright Carlo Gozzi, whom adapted many of Basile's and Straparola's works, as well as creating some playwrights of his own invention full of faiy tale elements. His first play, L'amore delle tre melerance, was represented for the first time in Venice in 1761, and based on Basile's The Three Citrons. It was so succesful that it got a sequel in 1765, titled L'Augellino Bel verde first represented in 1765, based on Straparola's The Green Beaubird. Another play based on a Basile's tale was The Raven, based on the tale of the same name and first represented in 1762.
19th Century[]
Only in the late 19th Century we can say there was a movement of Italian authors starting to collect tales from the oral tradition, after the period of Italian unification in the 1860s happened, although some collections of folk tales got published, even if most of them weren't even written in Italian. Most of them were written in German, as it was the case of Volksmärchen aus Venetien by Georg Widter and Adam Wolf, published in 1866; and Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol by Christian Schneller in 1867. One of the earliest examples of collection of Italian folktales written in the Italian language was Le Novelline di Santo Stefano by Angelo De Gubernatis, first published in 1869, that included versions of many tales that will latter became common in Italian collections. Among them we can find versions of Snow White (The Cruel Stepmother), and Biancabella and the Snake (The Blind Girl).
One of the first places where this was done was Sicily. The first collection of Sicilian folktales, titled Sicilianische Märchen, was first published in 1870 in German. The tales from this collection were gathered by Laura Gonzenbach, a writer born in Messina of Swiss-German ancestry, and included version of Donkey Skin (Betta Pilusa), Rapunzel (Beautiful Angiola), Rumpelstiltskin (Lignu di Scupa), Little Brother and Little Sister (Maria and Her Little Brother), The Pig King (The Pig King), Bearskin (Don Giovanni di la Fortuna), Puss in Boots (Count Piro), and Snow White (Maria, the Wicked Stepmother and the Seven Robbers, Maruzzedda and Beautiful Anna), as well as Basile's The Old Flayed Woman (The King Who Wanted a Beautiful Wife). Five years latter, in 1875, it was published the second collection of Sicilian folktales, this one written in the Sicilian dialect. Titled Fiabe novelle e racconti popolari siciliani this collection was gathered by Giuseppe Pitrè, a folklorist and medical doctor born in Palermo, who unlike Gonzenbach, credited his sources, something that quickly became costume between Italian folklorist. Among the narrators he credited as sources we can find Agatuzza Messia, an illiterate seamstress. The also also includes versions of Donkey Skin (Pilusedda), Snow White (Child Margarita), Little Brother and Little Sister (The Stepmother), Puss in Boots (Don Joseph Pear) and Rapunzel (The Old Woman of the Garden, in which once the witch takes away the heroine the story takes a different path, turning into a version of Hänsel and Gretel too), as well as Beauty and the Beast (The Empress Rosina), Sleeping Beauty (Sun, Pearl and Anna), Cinderella (Date Oh Beautiful Date, The Little Lamb), Old Mother Holle (Mamadràga the Ogress) and Basile's The Dove (Snow-White-Fire-Red), The Myrtle (Rosemary), and The Golden Root (The King of Love).
Meanwhile in the continental Italy in the same decade folktale collections were starting to get published too. Two of the first ones were La Novellaja fiorentina in 1871 and La Novellaja milanesa in 1872, both of them by Vittorio Imbriani, and that included retellings of Cinderella (La Cenerenola), Snow White (La Bell'Ostessina), Rapunzel (La Prezzemolina), The Pig King (Il Re Porco, El Corbattin), Beauty and the Beast (Zelinda e il Mostro). The same year Pitrè published his collection of Sicilian folktales Domenico Comparetti published his collection Novelline popolari italiane, in which he gathered folktales from continental Italy. Among them we can also find versions of Beauty and the Beast (Bellindia), Cinderella (La Cenerentola), Donkey Skin (Zuccaccia), The Pig King (Il figlioulo del re, maiale), The Golden Root (Filo d'Oro) and Biancabella and the Snake (Le tre sorelle). Another worth mentioning collectors from this decade that wrote their tales in their local dialects are Domenico Giuseppe Bernoni, who collected tales from Venice and gathered them in the collection Fiabe e novelle popolari veneziane, published in 1873, written in the Venetian dialect; and Carolina Coronedi-Berti, who collected tales from Bologne and gathered them in the collection Novelle popolari bolognesi published in 1874, written in the Bolognese dialect.
By the late 1870s and the 1880s new collections appear, such as Fiabe popolari rovignesi by Antonio Ive published in 1877; Fiabe Mantovane by Isaia Visentini in 1879, and that included a version of Basile's The She-Bear closer to it that any other od the versions collected in Italy, despite it omitted the incest from it; Sessanta novelle popolari montalesi by Gherardo Nerucci in 1880, made up mostly of tales already collected by Imbriani and Comparetti; Favole bolognesi by Carolina Coronedi-Berti in 1883, and Novelle popolari toscane by Giuseppe Pitrè in 1885, which included another version of Basile's The Myrtle (La Mela). In the late 1880s and the 1890s some regions of Italy whose folktales got neglected untill then finally got collected. That was the case with Sardinia, when in 1890 Francesco Mango published the collection Novelline popolari sarde, with the tales written both in Italian and in the Sardinian dialect, and that included version of Beauty and the Beast (S'urzu e is tres sorris), Snow White (Is tresgi bandius) and Rapunzel (S'Orcu e is duas gomais). Another region whose tales started to get more visibility this decade was Abruzzo, in eastern Italy, thanks to Antonio De Nino's and Gennaro Finamore's work. Finamore was an Anthropologist whose collection Tradizioni popolari abruzzesi included versions of Cinderella (La Bbrutta Cenerèlle), Donkey Skin (Lu Zòcchele de légne) and Puss in Boots (Ju fatte de Dun Giuuanne de Lupine). De Nino was also an Anthropologist who collected all kinds of folklore from Abruzzo and published it on Usi e costumi abruzzesi, whose third volume published in 1897 consisted in folk tales, among which we can find a Snow White version (La Bella Venezia), a Beauty and the Beast version (Bellindia), a Sleeping Beauty version (Milo, Piro e Laura), a Little Red Riding Hood version (L'Orca) and a Rapunzel version (Petrosemolella). Finally we got North amercian folklorist James Bruyn Andrews, who in 1892 published Contes ligures, traditions de la Rivière, a collection of tales written in French collected from Liguria, in northwestern Italy.
Serialized publications about folklore became also a way for folklorists to publish the folk trations and tales they collected, being the most important od them the folklore journal Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, founded by Pitrè, that started getting published in 1880. Among its contibutions we can find The Canary by Giuseppe Rua, La Sendraroeula by Caterina Pigorini-Beri and The Story of King Crin by Antonio Arietti.
It didn't took too long for international selections and translations of Italian folktales to appear. One of the first collections to gather folktales from different collections and translated them to another language was Unter den Olivenbäumen: Süditalianische Volksmärchen by Woldemar Kaden (1838-1907), published in 1880. The book contained forty-four tales, most of them collected by Pitrè, although some tales were also collected by Imbriani and Comparetti. The fact that Kaden didn't credit any source for the tales in his collection draw criticism for many folklorists, both in Germany and Italy. The other most relevant collection of this kind was Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1844-1927), published in 1885. Crane, unlike Kaden, not only credited all of his sources, but also used an even more wide range fo them.
But not only folk tales enjoyed this decade. Literary tales also have their fair amount of authors, collections and tales. Among the Italian literary tales writers we should mention Luigi Capuana, one of the most prolific figures. His first collection, titled C'era una volta, was first published in 1882 and contains such classics as Cecina, I tre anelli, Serpentina, Topolino, L'uovo nero, L'albero che parla, Ranocchino and L'arance d'oro. After its success Capuana published a second collection in 1894, titled Il raccontafiabe. Although of his own invention, Capuana's tales took inspiration from his native Sicily's oral tales, as we can see in La mammadraga, where the titular character already appeared in many of the folktales that Pitrè collected. But the most well known figure among Italian literary tale writers is undoubtedly Carlo Collodi, creator of the novel Le avventure de Pinocchio, published in serial form from 1881 to 1882 in the journal Giornale per le bambini. Not only is Collodi the creator of this iconic novel, full of fantastical elements that uses as well as parodies many classic fairy tale tropes such as the Good Fairy's aid, but he also translated Aulnoy's tales to Italian.
The Florentine writer Emma Perodi was also an author of Literary fairy tales that were heavily inspired by the oral tradition. Her best known work, Le novelle della nonna, was first published in 1892 and uses the framing device of a Tuscan peasant family's matriarch named Regina to tell the tales.
20th Century[]
At the beginning of the 20th Century Sicilian writer Luigi Capuana and Emma Perodi kept creating and publishing new tales. In 1908 Capuana published a new collection, titled Chi voul Fiabe, chi vuole?. But this century's most significant writer of Italian literary tales was undoubtly Gianni Rodari, who combined fantastical scenarios with mundane ones and modern technology, like in his collection Favole al telefono, first published in 1962, whose frame device consisted of a father using a phone to keep telling his daughter bedtime stories. He defended the importance of fantasy literature on his essay Grammatica della fantasia, published in 1973. Among the acknowledgements he got during his life we should mention he was the first Italian writer to won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, in 1970.
Meanwhile folk tale collectors kept collecting oral tales from Italian regions at the beginning of this century, such as Giggi Zanazzo, who gathered tales from Rome written in the local dialect and published them in the collection Novelle, favole e leggende romanesche, published in 1907. But the part of Italy that really benefitied at the beginning of the century was Calabria. A region in southwestern Italy that was kinda neglected by folklorists in the previous century, It finally started to got its folktales also collected. The first collection of Calabrian tales, titled Fiabe e novelle calabresi, was published in 1929, collected by Letterio Di Francia, among which there was versions of such typical Italian tales as Basile's Pintosmalto (Re Pipi), The Three Citrons (La figghia du re di Portugallu), The Two Cakes (Giacaddaruni), Donkey Skin (U mercanti e la figghia) and Rapunzel (Petrusinella). The second most important collection was done by Raffaele Lombardi Satriani and published after World War II, in 1953, under the title Racconti popolari calabresi.
By the mid-20th Century there was already so many folk tale collections that the first attempts to classify all the folktales collected untill then in the Aarne-Thompson index started to appear. Some of them, like Indice delle fiabe toscane by Gianfranco D'Aronco, published in 1953, centered around specific regions, whileothers like Motif-Index of the Italian Novelle in Prose by Dominic Peter Rotunda, first published in 1942 and latter revised in 1962, centered around the folktales from Italy as a whole.
It was in 1956 when the deemed as the master collection of Italian folktales was finally published: Fiabe italiane, a collection of two hundred Italian folktales from the nearly almost all the collections written until then, selected by Italian writer borned in Cuba Italo Calvino. Calvino's collection revitalized interest in Italian tales, both inside and outside Italy, specially in the 90s. After Calvino Roberto Piumini created several collections of Italian folktales by region. The first ones, Fiabe Siciliane and Fiabe lombarde, published in 1995, followed by Fiabe toscane in 1998 and Fiabe Venete in 1999. In regards of visual media, Italian filmmaker Lamberto Bava created a franchise based on one of the tales included in it. In 1991 the made for TV movie Fantaghirò, loosely based on the tale Fanta-Ghirò, persona bella, originally collected by Vittorio Imbriani. The film was so succesful that it earned four sequels, the last one released in 1996, and a cartoon TV show that run from 1999 to the year 2000. Picture book's adaptations of tales that appeared in Calvino's collection were also pretty common in the 20th Century's last decade, such as The Crab Prince: An Entertainment for Children, with texts and illustrations by Christopher Manson, published in 1991; The Canary Prince, with texts and illustrations by Eric Non Jones, also published in 1991; The Moon's Choice, with texts by John Warren Stewig and ilustrations by Jan Palmer, published in 1993; and Count Silvernose, with texts written by Eric A. Kimmel and illustrated by Omar Rayyan, published in 1996.
21st Century[]
Roberto Piumini kept publishing folktale collections in this century. First Fiabe del Lazio in 2002, followed by a collection of tales from all of Italy in 2004 titled Fiabe d'Italia, and Fiabe piemontesi in 2005. In 2015 the filmaker Matteo Garreone adapted three tales from Basile's Pentamerone in the film Tales of Tales, starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones and John C. Reilly among others. Garreone explores some aspects of the original tales, giving them a new twist. For example The Flea is the story of a princess craving for her desinterest father's approval who finally realises her own worth after killing herself the ogre she was betrothed to, and The Enchanted Doe explores the jealousy the queen felt in the original tale about her son Fonzo's friendship with Canneloro.
In the year 2000 a new inventory classifying Italian folktales in the Aarne-Thompson index, Indice della fiabe popolari italiane di magia by Renato Aprile, appeared.