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Tuscan Tales: the fantastic fables of Emma Perodi
Traditional tales from the mountains of skeletons and phantoms, scoundrels and saints, supernatural events and magical objects.Nonna Regina enchants her grandchildren with fantastic tales as she warms herself beside the fire in the family's ancestral home in a valley where seasons are intense, unexplained occurrences are many, and religion fuels the imagination. This collection of 19th-century fairy tales have, until now, remained unknown to English-language readers, although Italians have loved them for more than a hundred years. Perodi's stories will delight passionate readers of international folk and fairy tales as well as armchair travelers.
178 pages, Paperback
Published December 29, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 7, 2021
This is a wonderful book--and long overdue in English.
Emma Perodi, a contemporary of Carlo Collodi, (author of Pinocchio), constructed this classic novel-in-frames in 1893. Like Potacki's Manuscript Found in Saragossa, from 1805, Perodi's young adult classic updates the medieval 1001 Nights, Decameron, and Canterbury Tales by better balancing its more bourgeois frame-story (here the trials and joys of the rustic Marcucci family) with fantastic tales of their Casentino homeland.
A part of Florence's hinterland, half way up the Apennine mountains from the city of the Arno valley, the Casentino is rife with medieval legends that Perodi exploits as backdrops for her original pseudo-folklore: Dante fought in the bloody battle of Campaldino there, Saint Francis received the stigmata in his mountaintop retreat at La Verna there, and the rivalry between the dukes of Tuscany to the south and the condottiere of chivalric Romagna to the north is also legendary.
Originally written for young readers, these Tales of Grandma as they were called in Italian, are a wonderful blend of pure narrative pleasure, ghostly elements, medieval history, and Christian morality. Never heavy handed, the tales brim with the charm of Boccaccio's Florentine wit and a bit of Potacki's wicked Gothic imagery.
The only drawback is that these tales are only the first of the novel's full four books. Get back to work Ms. Hetherington and translate the other three books!
Emma Perodi, a contemporary of Carlo Collodi, (author of Pinocchio), constructed this classic novel-in-frames in 1893. Like Potacki's Manuscript Found in Saragossa, from 1805, Perodi's young adult classic updates the medieval 1001 Nights, Decameron, and Canterbury Tales by better balancing its more bourgeois frame-story (here the trials and joys of the rustic Marcucci family) with fantastic tales of their Casentino homeland.
A part of Florence's hinterland, half way up the Apennine mountains from the city of the Arno valley, the Casentino is rife with medieval legends that Perodi exploits as backdrops for her original pseudo-folklore: Dante fought in the bloody battle of Campaldino there, Saint Francis received the stigmata in his mountaintop retreat at La Verna there, and the rivalry between the dukes of Tuscany to the south and the condottiere of chivalric Romagna to the north is also legendary.
Originally written for young readers, these Tales of Grandma as they were called in Italian, are a wonderful blend of pure narrative pleasure, ghostly elements, medieval history, and Christian morality. Never heavy handed, the tales brim with the charm of Boccaccio's Florentine wit and a bit of Potacki's wicked Gothic imagery.
The only drawback is that these tales are only the first of the novel's full four books. Get back to work Ms. Hetherington and translate the other three books!
July 23, 2021
A lovely, strange, macabre, decidedly sexist (though matriarchal) collection of Italian fables. Everything you would expect in a collection of fables. The Christmas theme of the frame story at the beginning made me laugh because of how dark and violent the stories the matriarch told to the children were. Again: fables are wild. Religion has such violent themes and Christianity (in Catholicism and elsewhere) does not shy away from attempts to terrorize.
November 6, 2021
I picked up this collection of fairy tales last month to read to our kids at bedtime and they LOVED IT. It was amusing, bizarre, and poignant, as though Edward Gorey were writing from Risorgimento Italy. The translation is fluid, accessible for all ages (our kids are 6 and 10). There's a lot to love about creepy morality tales from the Casentino region of Tuscany. Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews