Italian Folktales
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
Italian Folktales gathers two hundred traditional stories selected and retold by Italo Calvino, translated into English by George Martin. The tales come from regions across Italy and carry figures familiar to folk literature: kings and peasants, saints and ogres, together with unusual plants and animals that take decisive roles in the action. Calvino drew on nineteenth-century regional collections and recorded oral material, keeping local detail while shaping the language for a wider Italian readership.
The tone shifts from earthy humor to quiet mystery to plain nonsense, sometimes inside a single story. Some tales follow narrative patterns known across Europe, while others belong to Sicilian, Tuscan, Piedmontese and other local traditions. Calvino added an introduction describing his method and his decisions as both editor and rewriter, which shows how such stories move between villages and change across geography and time.
In the year the collection first appeared, the New York Times placed it among the ten best books of that season, and it found a steady audience among readers of traditional tales. The English edition carries illustrations and was published as a Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, an imprint long associated with literary work translated from European languages.
