The Tale of Tales: Or Entertainment for Little Ones (Penguin Classics)

by Giambattista Basile (Author), Giambattista Basile (Author)

New
Illustrated
2016
$14.26

Giambattista Basile was a seventeenth-century Italian poet 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, Zosa 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 kings and queens, dragons and seduction, The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature

Synopsis

Giambattista Basile was a seventeenth-century Italian poet 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, Zosa 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 kings and queens, dragons and seduction, The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature

$14.26

Save:$2.26 (14%)

Quantity

3 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 494
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 07 Apr 2016
ISBN 10: 0143129147
ISBN 13: 9780143129141
Book Overview: The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature.

Media Reviews

Exhilarating . . . Invaluable . . . Vivid and fascinating . . . The body count is so high that it's lucky our dimwitted heroes and goodhearted fairies always seem to have convenient potions on hand to paste everyone's heads back on. . . . The writing has the manic, crowd-pleasing energy of a work meant to be read aloud. --NPR.org

Though [Basile] wrote for a literary elite, the dirt of an oral tradition clings to his telling, rich in legend and slang. --Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

What makes The Tale of Tales memorable is twofold: the lunatic imagery used in many of these stories, and the occasionally tart tone taken by its narration. . . . The bizarre details of several of these stories offer much to recommend. --Literary Hub

Author Bio

Giambattista Basile (1575-1632) was born to a middle-class family just outside of Naples, Italy. A poet, academic, and court administrator, he is most remembered for collecting the first set of European fairy tales, published by his sister two years after his death.