Pentamerone, or The Tale of Tales

We'll never know who initiated each of the tales in Pentamerone, but it's indisputable they were collected, rewritten and edited by Giambattista Basile. He very likely read it to his fellow academicians and to the nobility in the courts where he served, yet never published them. This task was done only a few years after his death by his sister Adriana. She signed him as Gian Alesio Abbatutis, what is an anagram of his real name Giovan Battista Basile.

This pseudonym was not meant to hide the identity of the author who already signed with this name several other works while he was still alive, but rather to distinguish between his literary works in Italian and Neapolitan language.

The structure of the book is one of its signature attractions. It is designed with a so-called frame story about the princess Zoza, which is tricked by her slave. The slave occupies her position in society, soon becomes pregnant and wishes to be entertained. Her husband arranges that ten storytellers come to the court and each one of them tells one story per day. With five days altogether we come to fifty stories (frame story included), similarly like Decameron presents one hundred stories told by ten storytellers in ten days.

• Short course in Greek: deka means ten, penta means five!

The story of Zoza has many elements which are repeated in the other stories as well, what glues otherwise unrelated stories in a stronger result. The same structure but told only by one narrator is of course 1001 Arabian Nights, with even more complexity with stories nested among stories told by characters of some stories which are told by other characters in other stories.

source: http://goodstuffonly.joomla.com/2-uncategorised/3-pentamerone-by-giambattista-basile

The language of Pentamerone is another major attraction. It is written in Neapolitan dialect, very likely the most difficult among dialects in the area of today's Italy. It has many borrowed words from Arabs, Frenchmen, Greeks, and Spaniards.

While providing a special layer of authenticity to the reader it also presents an important obstacle to everybody who doesn't understand Neapolitan - the majority of Italians included. The dialect in which Basile wrote Pentamerone set a standard to numerous collections of fairy tales made in next three centuries when folklorists started to preserve the language, customs, and stories of local people in different areas of the world.

With acknowledged similarities and differences the basics of national consciousnesses were set. Many small unstable city-states were united into much bigger, stronger and safer states.

The fairy tales in Pentamerone deal with numerous controversial subjects. The language is vulgar, many characters are often brutal, ugly, mean, hypocritical. The themes in the stories are adultery, cannibalism, incest, murder, rape, torture, ... Not exactly the material to read to your kids right before bedtime. These subjects were actually too much for an adult audience too, so the translations were heavily censored.

First versions of translations presented only somewhere from a dozen to three dozens of originally fifty tales. Some parts of these stories were often skipped and other parts diluted. Yet we still meet a Prince Charming who cheated on his wife and raped his mistress, parents eating their offspring and a Cinderella killing her step-mother. When rewritten for kids these stories were always softened with occasional exceptions like the version illustrated by Franz Bayros who managed to find erotic motifs even when nobody else saw them.

source: http://just4fairytales.blogspot.com/2018/11/franz-von-bayros.html

Pentamerone had a huge influence on all future writers and especially on fairy tale writers and collectors. Madame d'Aulnoy and Charles Perrault borrowed from Basile's masterpiece complete plots for their works. Brothers Grimm publicly thanked Basile for his contribution to literature.

Thousands of writers who never hear for this book or its author used parts of the stories from Pentamerone to create new, unique, yet already time-tested artworks. They (frankly, we) are actually still doing that and it looks next generation will continue to do the same. The dominant riches-to rags-riches plot looks attractive to be forgotten anytime soon.

We have also mentioned the importance of The Tale of Tales as the first national collection of fairy tales. Dozens of important collectors, editors and writers took this work as an example of the collection as it should be done by themselves too. With fairy tale books specific customs of regions in Europe and the rest of the world were archived and preserved, countless interesting examples of beliefs, linguistic specifics or simply old facts stayed written to be available to posterity.

A lot can be learned about life, relationships and society just by reading the fairy tales. People who are able to learn from the past, can better understand the present and create appropriate foundations for the future. We all learn from the mistakes, but it's better to learn from the ones already made by others, isn't it?

The Tale of Tales righteously deserves its title. Many of popular fairy tales were published in this book for the first time or belong to oldest known versions.

• Cenerentola, for instance, is a variant of Cinderella
• Parsley is an old version of Rapunzel
• Pride Punished is a very old variation of King Thrushbeard
• Sun, Moon, and Talia is the first known printed version of The Sleeping Beauty in Europe (detailed history of The Sleeping Beauty can be read here: http://justcoolstuff.over-blog.com/2018/12/sleeping-beauty-history.html)
• The Booby is an older version of How Six Went Out into the World
• The Tale of the Ogre is clearly a variant of The Wishing Table
• The Two Cakes is clearly an older sister of Diamonds and Toads with an ending almost the same as in The Goose Girl.
• The Young Slave is a predecessor of Snow White

Etc.

Clever plots, witty dialogues, and fantastic settings definitely call for the visual presentation of Pentamerone and its parts. One of the most attractive ones is definitely Matteo Garrone's movie Tale of Tales, available in DVD. This work is not for the faint-hearted audience, but each true cinephile should have this movie in his collection!