Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little
Ones. Translated by Nancy L. Canepa. 2007. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press. 463 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8143-2866-8 (soft cover).


Reviewed by Christine Goldberg

[Word count: 1338 words]


Basile's Tale of Tales, also called the Pentamerone, is a collection
of fifty stories--chiefly complex tales of magic, popularly known as
fairy tales--published in Naples in 1634-1636. It begins with a frame
tale: a heavily-pregnant imposter bride needs to be entertained, so
ten women tell one tale each on each of five days (a format
reminiscent of Boccaccio's Decamerone). When the true bride tells the
final tale, it reveals her own identity. Many of Basile's tales are
the oldest, or oldest European, examples of their respective tale
types, and many of them also have important connections to Indian or
other Eastern literature. The Pentamerone has been part of
comparative folktale scholarship since the beginning. The Grimms
recognized its kinship to their own Kinder- und Hausmärchen
(two-thirds of Basile's tales have KHM analogs). Their own intended
translation never materialized, but Jacob wrote an introduction to
the German translation of Felix Liebrecht.