Does an Italian equivalent of Grimms's Fairy Tales exist? Italo Calvino began his research into Italian folktales with that question in mind. When it became clear that there was no "readable master collection of Italian folktales which would be popular in every sense of the word," Calvino himself assumed the work of assembling one. It was a Herculean undertaking. Calvino collated, categorized, and compared "mountains of narratives." His work had two objectives, he tells us, the presentation of every type of folktale documented in Italian dialects and the representation of all regions of Italy. The "scientific" work, the direct transcription of folktales "from the mouths of the people," had already been done by several nineteenth century Italian folklorists. Calvino made his way through their anthologies, looking for the most unusual, beautiful, and original texts. These texts he then edited, enriched with variants, and translated into standard Italian from the various dialects in which they had been recorded. The end result is a collection of two hundred tales arranged in a geographical sequence. (p. 381)
[Calvino] is particularly struck by the many metamorphoses of woman and fruit and woman and tree in Italian folktales, and he points to the narrative power of the metaphorical link in which the image of the fruit evokes that of the woman. Often, however, it seems that the "precise rhythm" and "joyous logic" which he discerns in such stories of transformations are really the result of Calvino's own inventiveness. One of the most striking examples of his adaptation of a story in the direction of a more pronounced metaphorical symmetry is "The Little Girl Sold with the Pears."
This is a free excerpt of 271 words. There are 605 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Calvino, Italo 1923–: Critical Essay by Kristen Murtaugh Access Pass.
