Giovan Francesco Straparola is often called ‘the father of the literary fairy tale.’ Not unlike William Shakespeare, what we know of Strapola’s life story is something of a fairy tale.
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.
This is a very exciting project and we’d like to share with you 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.
Read it here.
