Giambattista Basile

Giambattista Basile (February 1566 – February 1632) was an Italian poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector. His collections include the oldest recorded forms of many well-known (and more obscure) European fairy tales. He is chiefly remembered for writing the collection of Neapolitan fairy tales known as ''Il Pentamerone.''

Biography

Born in Giugliano to a Neapolitan middle-class family, Basile was a soldier and courtier to various Italian princes, including the doge of Venice. According to Benedetto Croce he was born in 1575, while other sources have February 1566. In Venice he began to write poetry. Later he returned to Naples to serve as a courtier under the patronage of Don Marino II Caracciolo, prince of Avellino, to whom he dedicated his idyll ''L’Aretusa'' (1618). By the time of his death he had reached the rank of "count" ''Conte di Torrone''.

Basile's earliest known literary production is from 1604 in the form of a preface to the Vaiasseide of his friend the Neapolitan writer Giulio Cesare Cortese. The following year his villanella ''Smorza crudel amore'' was set to music and in 1608 he published his poem ''Il Pianto della Vergine''.

He is chiefly remembered for writing the collection of Neapolitan fairy tales titled '' Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille'' (Neapolitan for "The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones"), also known as ''Il Pentamerone'' published posthumously in two volumes by his sister Adriana in Naples, Italy in 1634 and 1636 under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis. It later became known as the ''Pentamerone''. Although neglected for some time, the work received a great deal of attention after the Brothers Grimm praised it highly as the first ''national'' collection of fairy tales. Many of these fairy tales are the oldest known variants in existence. They include the earliest known European versions of ''Rapunzel'' and ''Cinderella'' with the Chinese version of Cinderella dating from 850–60 AD.See Ruth Bottigheimer: Fairy tales, old wives and printing presses. ''History Today'', 31 December 2003
Retrieved 3 March 2011. Subscription required.
/ref> Tales of Pentamerone are set in the woods and castles of the Basilicata, in particular the city of Acerenza.

In popular culture

The 2015 film '' Tale of Tales'' is a screen adaptation loosely based on his fairy tale collection.

See also

* Charles Perrault
* Giovanni Francesco Straparola
* Brothers Grimm

References

Citations

Sources

*
*

External links and resources

*
*
*

Giambattista Basile
in ''Dizionario biografico degli italiani''






* ttp://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/pentamerone/goblepentamerone.html Illustrationsby Warwick Goble

Illustrations
by George Cruikshank

Professor S. Cicciotti's page about G. B. Basile
(in Italian)



* ''From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile's "Lo cunto de li cunti" and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale,'' Nancy L. Canepa (Wayne State University Press, 1999)
* ''Giambattista Basile's "The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones",'' Translated by Nancy L. Canepa, Illustrated by Carmelo Lettere, Foreword by Jack Zipes (Wayne State University Press, 2007)
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Basile, Giambattista
1566 births
1632 deaths
Neapolitan language
Collectors of fairy tales
Italian Renaissance writers
Italian poets
Italian male poets
16th-century Neapolitan people
People from Giugliano in Campania
Italian children's writers
Italian courtiers
16th-century Italian writers
16th-century male writers
17th-century Italian writers
17th-century Italian male writers
17th-century Neapolitan people
Fabulists