Giambattista Basile
(1575-1632)
Life
Basile came from a middle-class Neapolitan family; as an adult he became
a courtier and a soldier under various Italian princes, rising by the time
of his death to the rank of “count.”
Although he wrote other things, his most lasting work was Lo cunto de
li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (The Tale of Tales,
or Entertainment for Little Ones), also called Il Pentamerone
(1634-36), which “can lay claim to being the foundation stone of the modern
literary fairy tale” (Warner 148). It includes among its stories
the earliest European literary versions of many well-known fairy tales,
including “Sleeping Beauty” and “Rapunzel.”
The collection was probably intended for courtly audiences rather than
for children. It consists of 50 tales within a frame story, in which
a magic doll causes the queen to develop a craving for stories, which can
only be assuaged by bringing together the 10 best storytellers of the area
to tell stories for five days. “They are each and every one an old
hag, hunchbacked, cross-eyed, dribbling, and – limping. Comic crones,
conforming to the type of gossip, old wife, witch, and bawd” (Warner 149).
Basile's tales are more sophisticated than later fairy tales, and also
reflect more adult concerns – more similar to the work of Boccaccio (which
it resembles structurally) and Chaucer than of Perrault and the Grimms.
They included rhetorical flourishes, references to popular culture and
ordinary life in the late Italian Renaissance, and satire of court culture
and literature. According to Marina Warner, “Basile’s cheerful cynicism
and often scabrous immoralism continues the tradition of Boccaccio.”
Basile tales include: