Renowned today for his contribution to the rise of the modern European fairy tale, Giovan Francesco Straparola (c. 1480-c. 1557) is particularly known for his dazzling anthology The Pleasant Nights. Originally published in Venice in 1550 and 1553, this collection features seventy-three folk stories, fables, jests, and pseudo-histories, including nine tales we might now designate for 'mature readers' and seventeen proto-fairy tales. Nearly all of these stories, including classics such as 'Puss in Boots,' made their first ever appearance in this collection; together, the tales comprise one of the most varied and engaging Renaissance miscellanies ever produced. Its appeal sustained it through twenty-six editions in the first sixty years. This full critical edition of The Pleasant Nights presents these stories in English for the first time in over a century. The text takes its inspiration from the celebrated Waters translation, which is entirely revised here to render it both more faithful to the original and more sparkishly idiomatic than ever before. The stories are accompanied by a rich sampling of illustrations, including originals from nineteenth-century English and French versions of the text. As a comprehensive critical and historical edition, these volumes contain far more information on the stories than can be found in any existing studies, literary histories, or Italian editions of the work. Donald Beecher provides a lengthy introduction discussing Straparola as an author, the nature of fairy tales and their passage through oral culture, and how this phenomenon provides a new reservoir of stories for literary adaptation. Moreover, the stories all feature extensive commentaries analysing not only their themes but also their fascinating provenances, drawing on thousands of analogue tales going back to ancient Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic stories. Immensely entertaining and readable, The Pleasant Nights will appeal to anyone interested in fairy tales, ancient stories, and folk creations. Such readers will also enjoy Beecher's academically solid and erudite commentaries, which unfold in a manner as light and amusing as the stories themselves.

The editors have selected 33 of the 100 tales, including at least two from each of the ten days of storytelling. Included as well are Boccaccio's general introduction and conclusion to the work, as well as the introduction and conclusion to the first day; the reader is thus provided with a real sense of the Decameron's framing narrative. In selecting from among the tales themselves, the editors have looked to include the most interesting, the most representative, and the most widely taught of the tales, as well as a few (such as X.8, on the theme of perfect friendship) that are less familiar but that the editors feel to be deserving of wider circulation. The Beecher and Ciavolella translation conveys some sense of the often extended structures of Boccaccio's sentences, and a real sense as well of the different registers Boccaccio uses, from the often formal tone of the framing narrative to the highly colloquial feel of the dialogue in many of the more bawdy tales. Throughout, the translators have chosen language that makes this classic work accessible to twenty-first-century undergraduates. The edition includes extensive explanatory notes and a concise but wide-ranging introduction to Boccaccio's life and times, as well as to the Decameron itself. A unique selection of contextual materials concludes the volume; these include documentary accounts and illustrations of the Black Death in Florence; examples of source materials that Boccaccio drew on; examples from later medieval and early modern literature (both in Italy and in England) of work that was heavily influenced by the Decameron; documents (including Petrarch's famous comments about the tale of Patient Griselda) providing a sense of the early reception history of the work; and a variety of illustrations from early manuscripts of the Decameron. Like the versions provided of the Boccaccio tales themselves, the texts in this selection of "In Context" materials have been newly translated for this edition.

Renowned today for his contribution to the rise of the modern European fairy tale, Giovan Francesco Straparola (c. 1480-c. 1557) is particularly known for his dazzling anthology The Pleasant Nights. Originally published in Venice in 1550 and 1553, this collection features seventy-three folk stories, fables, jests, and pseudo-histories, including nine tales we might now designate for 'mature readers' and seventeen proto-fairy tales. Nearly all of these stories, including classics such as 'Puss in Boots,' made their first ever appearance in this collection; together, the tales comprise one of the most varied and engaging Renaissance miscellanies ever produced. Its appeal sustained it through twenty-six editions in the first sixty years. This full critical edition of The Pleasant Nights presents these stories in English for the first time in over a century. The text takes its inspiration from the celebrated Waters translation, which is entirely revised here to render it both more faithful to the original and more sparkishly idiomatic than ever before. The stories are accompanied by a rich sampling of illustrations, including originals from nineteenth-century English and French versions of the text. As a comprehensive critical and historical edition, these volumes contain far more information on the stories than can be found in any existing studies, literary histories, or Italian editions of the work. Donald Beecher provides a lengthy introduction discussing Straparola as an author, the nature of fairy tales and their passage through oral culture, and how this phenomenon provides a new reservoir of stories for literary adaptation. Moreover, the stories all feature extensive commentaries analysing not only their themes but also their fascinating provenances, drawing on thousands of analogue tales going back to ancient Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic stories. Immensely entertaining and readable, The Pleasant Nights will appeal to anyone interested in fairy tales, ancient stories, and folk creations. Such readers will also enjoy Beecher's academically solid and erudite commentaries, which unfold in a manner as light and amusing as the stories themselves.