Bargain Ebook: Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino for $2.99 TODAY ONLY

Folks, this is a run, don't walk, to get this deal before it disappears tonight if you don't already own this. Today only on Amazon, but hopefully price matched elsewhere, Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino is $2.99 in ebook format. This book is usually in the $10 range so it is a big bargain. More importantly, it's a great collection of fairy tales and folklore. Calvino retells Italian tales, obviously, and you'll find iterations of many of the best known tales. The book is on a lot of recommended folklore reading lists, too.

Book description:

One of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are “a treasure” (Los Angeles Times).

Filled with kings and peasants, saints and ogres—as well as some quite extraordinary plants and animals—these two hundred tales bring to life Italy’s folklore, sometimes with earthy humor, sometimes with noble mystery, and sometimes with the playfulness of sheer nonsense.

Selected and retold by one of the country’s greatest literary icons, “this collection stands with the finest folktale collections anywhere” (The New York Times Book Review).

“For readers of any age . . . A masterwork.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A magic book, and a classic to boot.” —Time

SurLaLune's Small Print:

As an Amazon Associate, the SurLaLune Fairy Tale site earns a percentage from qualifying purchases as a referral incentive which helps support the site. Your cost does not increase by using the links on this site. Read SurLaLune's Privacy Policy here. 

TODAY ONLY: Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino for $2.99

TODAY ONLY: Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino is on sale in ebook format for $2.99. Usually in the $10 range.

If you don't have this get it. Really. Chock full of lovely Italian folklore retellings. Lots of favorites in "newish" skins for many readers.

Book description:

One of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are “a treasure” (Los Angeles Times).

Filled with kings and peasants, saints and ogres—as well as some quite extraordinary plants and animals—these two hundred tales bring to life Italy’s folklore, sometimes with earthy humor, sometimes with noble mystery, and sometimes with the playfulness of sheer nonsense.

Selected and retold by one of the country’s greatest literary icons, “this collection stands with the finest folktale collections anywhere” (The New York Times Book Review).

Time for Some Fairy Tale Fun: The Tale of Tales by Giambattista Basile

The Tale of Tales by Giambattista Basile is coming from Penguin Classics on February 9, 2016!

Why am I posting about this release so early, you ask? Because it has amused me for a few weeks now. Keep reading all the way to the end to learn why.

First, here's the book's official overview from the publisher:

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Salma Hayek, John C. Reilly, Toby Jones, and Vincent Cassel: a rollicking, bawdy, fantastical cycle of 50 fairy tales told by 10 storytellers over 5 days

Before the Brothers Grimm, before Charles Perrault, before Hans Christian Andersen, there was Giambattista Basile, a seventeenth-century poet from Naples, Italy, whom the Grimms credit with recording the first national collection of fairy tales. The Tale of Tales opens with Princess Zoza, unable to laugh no matter how funny the joke. Her father, the king, attempts to make her smile; instead he leaves her cursed, whereupon the prince she is destined to marry is snatched up by another woman. To expose this impostor and win back her rightful husband, Zoza contrives a storytelling extravaganza: fifty fairy tales to be told by ten sharp-tongued women (including Zoza in disguise) over five days.

Funny and scary, romantic and gruesome—and featuring a childless queen who devours the heart of a sea monster cooked by a virgin, then gives birth the very next day; a lecherous king aroused by the singing of a woman, whom he courts unaware of her physical grotesqueness; and a king who raises a flea to monstrous size on his own blood, sparking a contest in which an ogre vies with men for the hand of the king’s daughter—The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature.

I am especially amused by the tasteful Penguin Classics cover with that little "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture" sticker. There are times when marketing machines entertain me so much! I appreciate the synergy and cross-pollination of the larger media machine, too, that Hollywood dominates. It frustrates me no end, but it has merits for reaching a very large audience.

So I am thrilled that a book that is over 400 years old and important to our fairy tale history is getting perhaps the biggest marketing push of its life all thanks to a film. Gypsy Thornton has shared several articles about the upcoming film at her Once Upon a Blog, so I haven't really addressed the movie yet. See her posts to date:

Breaking News: "The Tale of Tales" In Production (That's Right - We're About to Get Basile's Tales On Film. In English!)

What To Expect From Matteo Garrone’s "Tale of Tales" by "The Thinker's Garden" Custodian (& Film Update via FTNH)

"The Tale Of Tales" Gets A Trailer!

International Trailer for "Tale Of Tales" Released (Embedded video NSFW)

New "Tale of Tales" Trailers, Posters, Descriptions & TONS of Stills!

I am curious but I have to admit as much as I am willing to read the book--because I have!--I am squeamish at what the movie may offer. I'd rather not see some of the things I read in living color. Once we have that NSFW label, I'm very cautious. And Basile isn't as squeam-inducing as Straparola. Perhaps Hollywood or HBO should attack Straparola next.

Anyway, the final cause for my amusement is also a warning. If you already own this book:

Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies)--which I do--you do not need the new book. According to the available descriptions and such, they are the same book. The first was published over 8 years ago and was a book I was very thrilled about when it was released. (Still am. I had been wanting a modern translation for years! Thanks, Nancy Canepa!) The edition is oversized and has fine quality paper. It is very much academic in nature. Yes, it is still in print and it is more expensive than the upcoming book release, but it is the same book. You don't have to wait.

And if you want the loosely translated, less inflammatory version--some stories removed in other words--you can always visit Il Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile on SurLaLune, too.

TODAY ONLY: Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino is $1.99

Folks, this is a run, don't walk, to get this deal before it disappears tonight. Today only on Amazon, but hopefully price matched elsewhere, Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino is $1.99 in ebook format. This book is usually in the $10 range so it is a big bargain. More importantly, it's a great collection of fairy tales and folklore. Calvino retells Italian tales, obviously, and you'll find iterations of many of the best known tales. The book is on a lot of recommended folklore reading lists, too.

I own this one in hardcover--I have for years--but I dashed to purchase an ebook copy since it is thick and heavy in paper and doesn't travel well. Now I will always have it available in my pocket. Yay! (Have you read A Library In Your Pocket: How Having an E-reader Has Changed My Reading Habits by Jo Walton yet? That's the reason to own an ereader although I adopted much earlier, also thanks to a trip to Europe. I thought I would probably return the one I bought on trial after my trip. Didn't happen!)

Four other Calvino titles are also discounted today--go to Italo Calvino Bargain Ebooks for 3/20/14--but this is the most important to readers here. I bought them all for these great prices, but if you are on a budget, Italian Folktales is worth every cent and is worth giving up another small luxury this week.

Book description:

Chosen as one of the New York Times’s ten best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists. Introduction by the Author; illustrations. Translated by George Martin. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Out of the Woods by Nancy Canepa: Hardcover 60% Off

Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France by Nancy Canepa is bargain priced in the US for an unknown amount of time to 60% of the list price for the HARDCOVER.

This is not an ebook bargain like most I post. Currently the price is $17.98 in the US with a list price of $44.95. I noticed this because it appears on a giveaway list submission I'm posting later this week. And that price is much less than I paid for the book years ago.

Amazon says five copies are currently available at this price and this is an excellent title to add to your fairy tales library. The book is out of print and only available used from most other sellers.

Book description:

Out of the Woods studies the birth and early evolution of the literary fairy tale in Italy and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from the early Italian collections (Straparola and Basile), through the "first wave" of fairy tale production in the France of Louis XIV (Perrault and d'Aulnoy), up to later eighteenth-century manipulations and transformations (Hamilton, Gozzi, Casanova). The tales analyzed here were appropriated from the oral tradition and transformed by professional men and women of letters into sophisticated literary creations for an elite audience of court and salon frequenters. Thus, far from being minor works or "entertainment for little ones," these fantastic tales contributed to an interrogation and revision of the cultural history of their times, offering new paradigms of narrative representation and social interaction.

Table of Contents

Preface 7
Introduction 9

I The Rebirth of a Genre: The Creation of the Literary Fairy Tale in the Seventeenth Century

1 "Quanto 'nc'e da cca a lo luoco dove aggio da ire?": Giambattista Basile's Quest for the Literary Fairy Tale 37

2 Beauty and the Hag: Appearance and Reality in Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti 81

3 Perrault's Contes: An Irregular Pearl of Classical Literature 99

II From Genre to Gender and Ideology

4 Marvelous Realities: Reading the Merveilleux in the Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tale 131

5 Fairy Tales about Fairy Tales: Notes on Canon Formation 152

6 Of Cats and Men: Framing the Civilizing Discourse of the Fairy Tale 176

7 Reflections on the Monarchy in d'Aulnoy's Belle-Belle ou le chevalier Fortune 194

III Eighteenth-Century Parodies and Transformations of the Fairy Tale

8 Fractured Fairy Tales: Parodies for the Salon and Foire 221

9 The Reactionary Imagination: Ideology and the Form of the Fairy Tale in Gozzi's Il re cervo [The King Stag] 247

10 "Lecteur, ne vous allarmez pas" [Reader, be not afraid]: Giacomo Casanova and Reading the Fantastic 278

11 Little Red Riding Hood as Fairy Tale, Fait-divers, and Children's Literature: The Invention of a Traditional Heritage 306

Contributors
Index

New Release: Straparola's The Pleasant Nights Volumes 1 and 2

 

The Pleasant Nights: Volume 1 (Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library) was released in August and The Pleasant Nights: Volume 2 (Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library) will be released in November.

Ah, Straparola! It's time this book was republished with a new treatment. I spent many an hour scanning The Facetious Nights by Giovanni Francesco Straparola translated by W. G. Waters (1901) back in 2005 before Google Books was a powerhouse and before anyone else had made this available online. That's how I used to spend my free time, silly me. Then the internet grew even bigger and other people started doing that kind of work for me even if they didn't know it was for me... If I had just decided to wait a few years, I could have spent more time watching TV. But scanning and editing is a great way to grow intimate with a text--only translating is more intimate.

This new translation draws from the Waters edition but hopefully translates the French bits which were considered too racy to be put into English in the Waters edition. Yes, that happened once upon a time in publishing land, the racy bits were offered in French for the well-educated who would be "mature" enough to handle them, I guess, or hopefully not be offended. Interesting topic during Banned Books Week, too, and that was just serendipity.

But these are definitely on my wishlist although not an immediate buy thanks to the understandable pricing. New houses and all that stuff plus an already sizable SurLaLune budget just to keep me current keep me from impulse buying...

Should I devote some posts to Straparola after the second volume is released?

Book description:

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.

You can read an excerpt from the Introduction of Volume I of The Pleasant Nights, ‘The Straparola Dilemma, or the Biography of an Invisible Author’ by editor Donald Beecher here.