...This chapter examines the nineteenth-century collection of Sicilian folk tales collected by Laura Gonzenbach. In particular, it focuses on a tale that echoes Basile’s two versions of the Cupid and Psyche myth. The close reading of the Gonzenbach version shows important differences between...

...This chapter with a tale from the Sicilian collection of fairy tales (“The Maiden with Seven Veils”) that is a rewriting of the first and the last tale of Basile’s The Tale of Tales. This original patchwork leads us to investigate the meaning of beginnings and endings in tales...

...’ tale is already visible in Basile’s The Tale of Tales (1634), the first book of the Western tradition of literary fairy tales. Basile’s book is a literary product but reads like the transcription of a sequence of oral tales. In my analysis of The Tale of Tales, I...

...This chapter introduces Basile’s seminal The Tale of Tales, the first collection of literary fairy tales of the Western tradition. In particular, this chapter studies how the seventeenth-century Italian author reinterprets the concepts of ‘oral’ and ‘written.’ Basile’s baroque...

...This is a central chapter in my book. It examines how the Brothers Grimm and Clemens Brentano, three main figures of German Romanticism, interprets Basile’s The Tale of Tales and in particular the tale “The Myrtle.” For the Brothers Grimm Basile was the first collector of oral...

... appropriation of the magic of fairy tales. Elkin’s style is reminiscent of Basile’s harsh, vulgar, and disrespectful approach to fairy tales. Disney Walt Baudrillard Jean Eco Umberto Marin Louis Zipes Jack Elkin Stanley Coover Robert Stanley Elkin Disney World Basile satire postmodernism The Magic...

...This chapter examines “The Myrtle,” one of the most famous tales from Basile’s collection. Although the myth of Cupid and Psyche is still the foundation of this tale, “The Myrtle” also heavily borrows from the Apollo and Daphne myth. The dialogue between the two mythic tales leads to a sequence...

...This chapter studies the Grimms’ summaries (also defined as adaptations) of Basile’s fifty tales in The Tale of Tales. In particular, this chapter focuses on the Grimms’ transformations of Basile’s two versions of the Cupid and Psyche myth, the topic of the first chapter...