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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.
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