The Tale of Tales
$46.97
- Paperback
494 pages
- Release Date
1 May 2016
Summary
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Salma Hayek, John C. Reilly, Toby Jones, and Vincent Cassel—a rollicking, bawdy, fantastical cycle of 50 fairy tales told by 10 storytellers over 5 days.
Before the Brothers Grimm, before Charles Perrault, before Hans Christian Andersen, there was Giambattista Basile, a seventeenth-century poet from Naples, Italy, whom the Grimms credit with recording the first national collection of fairy tales. The Tale of Tales—also known as T…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780143129141 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0143129147 |
| Author: | Giambattista Basile |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Imprint: | Penguin Classics |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 494 |
| Release Date: | 1 May 2016 |
| Weight: | 509g |
| Dimensions: | 215mm x 140mm x 29mm |
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Critics Review
“Exhilarating … Invaluable … Vivid and fascinating … The body count is so high that it’s lucky our dimwitted heroes and goodhearted fairies always seem to have convenient potions on hand to paste everyone’s heads back on… . The writing has the manic, crowd-pleasing energy of a work meant to be read aloud.” —NPR.org
“Though [Basile] wrote for a literary elite, the dirt of an oral tradition clings to his telling, rich in legend and slang.” —Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
“The first authored collection of literary fairy tales in Western Europe … [In Basile] we have the exuberance, outlandishness, and hilarity of an Italian Rabelais, or ‘a deformed Neapolitan Shakespeare,’ as Calvino called him… . The text teems with a good-tempered, baroque liveliness and endless allusions to Neapolitan customs of every kind. It is a unique reading experience… . [The translator] deliver[s] a highly readable prose that mixes modern vulgarity with a vaguely proverbial aplomb (‘every piece of shit has its own smell’), often refashioning old Neapolitan sayings into something credibly contemporary (‘they were given pizza for pasty’), and never failing to use footnotes to offer the curious reader a sense of the rich life beneath the surface of the story… . She gives us an entire world, and gives it in the liveliest possible way.” —Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books
“What makes The Tale of Tales memorable is twofold: the lunatic imagery used in many of these stories, and the occasionally tart tone taken by its narration… . The bizarre details of several of these stories offer much to recommend.” —Literary Hub
About The Author
Giambattista Basile
Giambattista Basile (1575-1632) was born near Naples, Italy, and was an accomplished poet, courtier, and feudal administrator. Today he is remembered for The Tale of Tales, the first integral collection of fairy tales published in Europe; it includes the first literary versions of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and many other classic tale types.
Nancy L. Canepa (translator and introducer) is an associate professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth College.
Jack Zipes (foreword) is a preeminent fairy tale scholar who has written, translated, or edited dozens of books, including The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. He is a professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota.
Carmelo Lettere (illustrations) is an Italian artist. Originally from Lecce, Italy, he now lives in New Hampshire.
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