Italian Folktales

I love these creative, lyrical stories. I'm fascinated by the female empowerment in the stories (princesses frequently use own wits to help in their rescue, and are given opportunity to not marry their rescuer). Lots of puzzles and rewards for good behavior. The cynical and misogynistic Grimm Bros tales are dark and cruel against these joyful stories of creativity and wit. Calvino's writing (translation) is loose and lyrical and as fun as it always is.

Italo Calvino's collection of Italian folktales opens with an extended discussion of Italian folklore, his criteria for story inclusion, historical anthologies used as his sources, and characteristics of Italian folktales. Not being a folklore scholar myself, I skipped much of that and started in on the 200 folktales, each a short gem. As expected, I found commoners who married royalty or became wealthy through their deeds, royalty who married commoners, brave men and women who succeed in their quests along with jealous and cruel household members who eventually get what they deserve, magical creatures who help or harm, and more. Most end happily for the good people and badly for the evil. The youngest brother or sister is generally the cleverest and kindest. Often the villains are old women or people with dark skin or physical deformities, while the good are fair and attractive, thereby revealing prejudices of the time and place. But Calvino also includes tales that have a bitter twist ending or go against stereotypes, which keeps the collection interesting.

love me some calvino. this would make good bathroom reading if you're gonna be there for 10-20 minutes or so.

Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino is a marvelous collection of stories akin to Grimms Fairy Tales, or Charles Parrault’s Tales of Mother Goose. As the preface explains, Italy lacked, until this book, a ‘comprehensive book of Italian folk tales, one that would be representative of the entire country and intended for popular consumption as well.’ Calvino must have expended an immense effort, working through 19th century source materials, to compile these stories, but none of this scholarly toil is recorded in the book except for brief mention in the preface. The book includes no information about where and when each story appeared, what variations exist, echoes in neighboring countries, none of that. This is not a work of anthropology or literary history but, as the title says, a collection of folk tales. What distinguishes the book isn’t scholarly embellishment but the fact that the stories are collected, assembled, edited, and arranged by a master story teller.Folk tales are 33% plot, 33% conflict, and 33% theme. Little attention goes to setting (once upon a time in a land far away) or character, (there was a barber who had three sons). Vaguely described settings and stereotyped characters help make these stories understandable to anyone at any time or place. Where plot is preeminent, who better to hold the tiller than Calvino, a master of plot. Consider his If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, a novel in which the narrator engages the reader regarding the plot several times and still succeeds in drawing attention back to what happens next in the story with the intensity of a spy thriller. His sure hand of story-telling was precisely the hand needed to arrange these folk stories.The collection begins with ‘Whoever Loses His Temper Loses the Bet’ and ends with ‘The Lame Devil,’ and delivers in total 53 nuggets of narrative, involving giants and fairies, monkeys and ducks, kings and hunchbacks. Enjoy.

It's been fun reading these, but man do a lot of them start with kings and queens who were sad because they had no child, or other openings like that. And I think women who are poor and/or in unfortunate circumstances. So it can kind of be triggering. And the repetition is due to this being a collection of many many stories from different regions of Italy. And there may be a bit of racism. I'm glad Calvino didn't gloss over these things as I feel like this is meant as a record of his country's folk tradition, warts and all, but we sometimes skip ahead to find the few that don't match this pattern. Also, most of these seem to have nonsensical endings, at least at the beginning. Still, happy I bought it.

Italian Folktales selected and edited by Italo Calvino (1923-1985) and translated by George Martin is an embarrassment of riches. Consisting of 200 folktales from all over Italy, the collection brims with magical tales, animal fables, legends, and anecdotes about benighted kingdoms, invisible brides, serpent kings, princesses with horns, witches, wizards, fairies, knights. Short and quick-paced, the tales are full of intrigues, mysteries, disappearances, and transformations. Infinitely varied, a mixture of the real and the unreal, they are consistent in their sense of morality: always at the end, the victory of the good and the punishment of the bad.

Italo Calvino, the great novelist and literary critic, keeping things deceptively simple with these page-turning, delightful tales. Each is no more than a few pages. I'm a former literature and linguistics major, including graduate level, and this must be one of my favorite bedtime books (livre de chevet as the French say), I have ever, ever encountered. Italo, thank you for the many, many gifts that you left us, RIP forever. Pay extra for one of the early 1980's hard cover editions, if you can find one. Great "heft" in a book.

Couldn’t help but notice a number of the poor reviews of this book pertain to issues with the Kindle ebook edition. The Kindle version published by Mariner Books is indeed the same as the print edition - 200 stories, translated by George Martin.

Great book! Much easier to read than the tiny print of the British and italian versions. Very good condition almost new. It took more than a month to arrive and it had me worried but worth the waiting.

not all stories are for kids, some or quite strange!

I was looking forward to reading these stories but the book binding is not strong. I fear the pages will come off when trying to read/ open the book. The adhesive is not not enough for the weight of those book Big disappointment.

A wonderful collection. Lots of variety of theme, length, serious humorous tales.