#Italian fairytales

[adarkrainbow]

As I have been reblogging and looking back at Sleeping Beauty stuff around the Internet, I realized the thing that is bothering me a bit... When it comes to the you know "original" format of Sleeping Beauty.

Everywhere on the Internet you have these posts and videos and whatnot about "The dark truth behind Sleeping Beauty" or "The Horrifying Origins of Sleeping Beauty!", and they all refer to the fact that in the "original" version of the tale, she got raped in her sleep. This is the "dark fact" everybody LOVES to spread around and talk about. Except... Except the version they refer to is Basile's "Sun, Moon and Thalia".

Why does that matter? I'll explain.

Everybody depicts "Sun, Moon and Thalia" as this sort of dark, horrifying tale of a grim and gruesome crime. They will have in their video a dark background, and creepy illustrations, and they will take an ominous horror movie voice and whatnot.

But there's a big problem with that. Basile's stories were all except serious. They were humoristic tales. Or more precisely, they were farcical stories. Farces. There's a reason its "twin compilation", Straparola's fairytale collection, is called "Facetious Nights". So the very idea of presenting these stories as if they were meant to be taken seriously is completely misreading the story's tone. Yes there was a rape - but if you extract this from the entire context and storytelling, you make this tale sound like something it is absolutely not.

"Sun, Moon and Thalia" is not meant to be a horror story. It was not meant to be read as "serious" story. It has nothing to do with either the Grimm or Perrault fairytales. The entirety of the "Pentamerone" is basically a folk-sex comedy. If such a thing can exist.

Every fairytale of the Pentamerone is opened by a small recap of the story announcing what it will be about - and already from the get-go the very two lines opening this recap give the humoristic nature of the tale away. "Thalia dies because of a splinter". I mean come on - the joke is obvious. A girl gets a splinter, she dies. And if this wasn't enough the rest of the sentence can be translated as following: "she is left in a room where the son of the king penetrates and makes her two children". The choice of the word "penetrate" is to highlight the pun in the original line where the prince entering Thalia's bedroom and the prince entering Thalia's body is resumed in one same verb.

For more breakdown of the jokes of the story, see below the cut:

As I said before from the get-go the "curse" is treated as a joke. You have this king that summons scholars to make his daughter's horoscope, right? And what does it say. "She is in great danger... BECAUSE OF A SPLINTER!". This is literaly the killer rabbit of the Monty Pythons.

In this story, what does the little old woman that offered the princess the spindle does, once the princess falls dead? (Because she is dead in this version, a magical death, but dead still). Does she warns everybody and cries for help as in Perrault's version? No! "She was quick to find back the stairs [from which she came in]" and she runs as fast away as she can without warning everybody, because she's not going to get into trouble because of some random girl that wanted to see how to spin.

The whole arrival of the prince is very, VERY unprincely and part of the joke. (Well it is a king here but I'm going to call him "prince" so as to not lose people). So he is hunting, right, and his hunting falcon enters the countryside building in which the king locked up his daughter's corpse. The prince wants to get back his bird, so he knocks - because he believes the house is inhabited. And since nobody answers and he REALLY wants his bird back, he fetches a ladder and is forced to climb up a window like a vulgar thief. And he is royalty, remember.

What is the prince's first interaction with the dead Thalia? Believing she is asleep, he starts talking to her. And since she doesn't answer he kind of shakes her around in trying to wake her up. And then suddenly, realizing she kind of looks good (an that she is visibly not alive anymore), he "does his little business" and promptly puts her back where he found her and leaves. Because he is, like most men in the Pentamerone a stupid horny dog without much morals that has the most sudden and bizarre bursts of sexual desire. Cause again the Pentamerone is a sex comedy.

In fact, in the story of "Sun, Moon and Thalia", the prince is MEANT to come off as quite stupid. He is stupid. First off he didn't get that Thalia was dead when he saw her. Then, as soon as he leaves the funeral-house, it is said he "forgot all about this adventure". Like literaly, he forgets all about it - and only suddenly remembers it randomly when Thalia wakes up. (The narration itself highlights the randomness of the events - the fact the prince remembers Thalia is random and for no reason, and in the same way there are two fairies that randomly appear out of nowhere to take care of the two babies and we are never explained anything about them - they even frighten poor awakened Thalia because she doesn't know who brings her magically food every day). When he sees back Thalia, he is all joyful and happy and he is like "Let's start a family! I'm a dad, woohoo!" ; and then the narration drops the bomb that nothing had foreshadowed: "Now, his wife was waiting for him back at the palace." The randomness of dropping the fact he has a wife is meant to be the joke, since we were led to believe he was a bachelor. But given the prince's tendency to forgetfulness it is very likely that he simply forgot he had a wife.

More of the prince's obvious stupidity and air-headedness. On one side how he betrays Thalia and her children's names to his wife - because he just can't stop repeating and singing their names out loud, day and night, even when eating or sleeping, due to how silly-happy he is. On the other, the reason why he is absent while his wife tortures Thalia: he got angry at a comment of hers, and because he was furious, he literaly had to go to ANOTHER LAND just to vent his anger. Literaly, he leaves his palace and moves to another of his domain just because he got pissy. And why did he get pissy? Because his wife kept ironically singing to him "Eat, because what you eat belongs to you" when she served him his "children" - and the stupid prince, unable to understand what she meant, literaly answers "Of course it belongs to me: I'm the bread-winner of the family, while you're doing nothing and bringing nothing to the house". [Which by the way, highlights the fact that in this couple, the wife is depicted as profiting off the king's wealth and power].

Speaking of the dinner around the fake "children": this meal is another sex joke. Because the two of them, the wife and husband, are "panting with desire" around the dishes, and keep singing stuff like "Oh that's good, oh that's good!" and "Come on, eat, come on eat!" making it all an erotic scene. A ridiculous, grotesque, perverse erotic scene around what one character believes to be a cannibalistic meal, while the other just very loudly appreciates good meat.

When the queen tries to have Thalia killed, Thalia tries to defend herself by the fact she didn't know of the queen's existence, and that any sexual thing that happened between her and the prince was in her sleep - which the queen of course does not believe because of how ridiculous it all seems. I mean you catch who you believe is your husband's lasting extra-marital mistress and what is her excuse? "Oh no you see, he made me my kids when I was asleep. Well kind of dead. I didn't know. No he did not wake me up. I didn't wake up either when the kids were born. I'm a really deep sleeper. And it was because of a splinter you see..." Literaly, imagine yourself in the place of the jealous queen hearing all that.

Thalia gains time on her execution by asking the permission to remove her clothes, and the queen accepts, but as a joke she accepts out of greed because she literaly wants to take back Thalia's dress and jewels for herself. And each time Thalia removes a piece of her clothes, she screams. She screams in hope of alerting the prince. But since the prince is far away, he doesn't hear until the very last scream. Meaning that Thalia literaly strips herself in front of the queen, while screaming every time she takes off a piece of clothing, to visibly no effect (which must leave the poor queen quite confused), and it is only when Thalia gets naked and pushes the final scream that the prince suddenly arrive. You can imagine Thalia going: "FINALLY! I've been screaming for hours now!" (especially when you consider how much pieces of clothing princesses wore at the time).

Literaly one of the threats the prince gives to his wife is "Get ready to go fatten up the broccolli". As a metaphor for being dead and buried underground. Tip-top manly threat. In fact the prince is here quite proficient in ridiculous poetic metaphors: when the cook reveals he saved his children, the prince says "Get ready to move out of the small kitchen of my castle to the vast kitchen of my heart."

And of course the final "moral" of the story is also part of the entire farcical joke that is this story. "People who are lucky receive good fortune, even in their sleep". You literaly have a girl who is randomly raped in her sleep and gives birth to children in her dead-sleep, and then is almost murdered by the rapist' wife... And THAT'S the moral of the story? If you take it all literaly, then you are a fool. Or at least Basile would have called you a fool.

Again, people tend to forget that when it comes to literary fairytales (but also a lot of folk-fairytales) there is a TONE that is important. It is the brothers Grimm and other collectors after them that imposed the idea that fairytales were meant to be read "seriously". A lot, LOT of fairytales were originally humoristic - even going into dark humor or sex comedy. And whenever you go by Straparola or Basile, you HAVE to look at them under the angle of a joke or humor, and search for the puns and caricatures and ridiculousness within these tales. Because these books were meant to be read as such. They are like Rabelais' Gargantua or Shakespeare's comedies. You can of course reinterpret them as "serious" tales... But it won't remove the fact the original was humoristic.

[maimoncat]

So I am reading "La Bella e la Bestia: quindici metamorfosi di una fiaba" (Beauty and the Beast: fifteen metamorphoses of a fairy tale), which is a compendium of some of the main versions of the "Beauty and the Beast" story, and I love how the editor talks about the tuscanian version, "Bellinda and the Monster":

... The most influenced by the french versions. With merchant, roses and wicked sisters. And an unexpected yet revealing ending. After the fateful sentence "Monster, Monster, there's nothing left for me without you" the girl turns around, missing the metamorphosis. When she looks back, a handsome knight stands before her, thanking her for having turned him back. At which Bellinda, still shocked, answers "But I want the Monster!"

[fairytaleslive]

Wow, this great story feels so familiar!

Isn't it remarkably similar to Italian fairytale Parrot Prince (only without the frame story)? Even the ailments of the princesses are nearly the same ❤️.

THE PRINCESS WHO GOT LOST IN THE FOREST

@themousefromfantasyland @princesssarisa @thealmightyemprex @shelleythesapphic @allthegoodbobdylanlyricsaretaken @softlytowardthesun @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @barbossas-wench @professorlehnsherr-almashy @tamisdava2

(Brazilian Folktale)

He was a widowed king. His daughter was more beautiful than precious stones and brightest stars in the sky. The king adored his daughter, but he was unhappy.

Never to have had a son who could, one day, inherit his domains and command his armies and the destinies of its people.

Even so, instead of getting married again and trying to have the desired, the king had made a decision: it would be his daughter, and no one else, the future queen and mistress of all she owned.

And the princess grew up, more and more beautiful, spoiled and difficult to dominate. She disdained dangers. She swam in the dark lagoons. She liked to take risks- along the roads, jumping over banks and fences with his sorrel horse.

One day, she looked for her father. She said she intended to go on a hunt. The king became worried.

He argued that a woman's place was at home, close to luxury, clothes, jewelry and perfumes.

The daughter smiled. She replied that she liked jewelry and perfumes, but also to travel, visit distant places and walk the roads facing the unexpected. The king, as always, ended up agreeing. Some time later, the princess left following a group of hunters.

She was elegant, wearing a velvet skirt and a pair of white gloves. The bush he became more and more closed and the girl became happier and happier. She went ahead of everyone mounted on her sorrel.

She walked so much, she did so much, she ran so much that, when she saw it, she was lost in the forest. That's not why she was worried.

As it was hot, she decided look for a river to quench her thirst. She ended up finding a fountain, drinking water and, to wait for the other hunters, she settled down on a rock and slept. She was in the most beautiful of dreams, when a prince appeared.

The youth, son of a neighboring king, he had never seen such a beautiful and delicate person before. He waited for the girl to wake up, but she, tired, continued sleeping. deep.

Night was coming. The prince thought it best to go get one carriage to take her. To mark her presence, he took one of her white gloves. girl and left. As soon as the boy left, the girl opened her eyes. Noticing dusk, she jumped on his horse and went in search of his companions.

Through the dark night without find anyone. She ended up arriving in a distant country. Afraid to reveal who she was and run the risk of being considered an impostor, she went to a store, bought very simple clothes and found a job as a maid in the king's palace.

The queen soon sympathized with the maiden, determining that she would keep company for the daughter, the princess, who, unfortunately, was mad.

The poor patient spent, from time to time, times, through incomprehensible moments of discouragement and sadness. At these times, She locked herself in her room, lay down on the bed and didn't want to eat or talk to anyone. nobody.

Furthermore, she suffered from delusions, sometimes she didn't know who she was, she heard voices, she danced without listening to music and, once, she even tore her own clothes and go out naked through the city streets.

The other princess, the one who had now become a servant, with pity, looking for treating the sick girl in the best way possible, decided to teach her how to play cards.

One afternoon, the sky turned dark and the lights in the castle and town went out.

Frightened, people ran, locking themselves in their homes. The created princess did different.

She sent the sick girl to wait in her room and went out to see if she discovered the reason for that unexpected lack of light. She walked and walked until she saw a flash in the middle of the bush.

As she got closer, she saw two huge, shaggy dogs standing in front of her. around a fire, walking on two legs and stirring a spoon, in a cauldron. Next to them, an evil-looking man recited:

"Turn that turns that while turning

The sweet princess can't think

Move as long as you stir

The sweet princess will go mad"

The young woman was not afraid. She came out from behind the bushes and, in front of the surprised characters, she said that the power in the palace had gone out. She asked for a fire to light a candle. She said more.

She revealed that, just now, she was in the middle of a lively game of letters with the princess.

She needed light to finish the match. Hearing this, the Evil-looking man widened his eyes.

"It's not possible!"

He said."

"Everyone knows the princess is crazy and she can't even think, let alone play cards!"

Pretending to be surprised, the girl laughed. She said the man was mistaken. She said that she had been the princess's maid for a long time and that the girl was very beautiful, smart and intelligent.

In the deck, then, she added, it was almost invincible.

Furious, the man started shouting:

"You mean you were deceiving me this whole time?"

And grabbing the dogs by the scruff of the neck, he threw them into the steaming cauldron. Meanwhile, the girl lit the candle, said goodbye and ran back to the palace. She found the lights on and the princess completely healed, as Her charm had come to an end.

The maid's fame spread around the world, reaching the ears of another king.

His daughter, poor one, unfortunately, was also sick. The poor thing couldn't speak.

Her father ordered the services of the maid, who immediately accepted the challenge. Arriving at the palace, she soon befriended the mute princess.

They both spent the day talking through gestures, making faces and laughing.

The maid, meanwhile, investigated, trying to find something she might be causing the girl's illness.

Without discovering anything, she asked permission to sleep in the molting room. The king agreed.

On the first night, as soon as the sick princess closed her eyes, the maid heard a noise. Pretending she was asleep, she kept peeking out of the corner of her eye.

A trapdoor opened on the floor of the room and out came a huge, dark, so-called dog, so ugly that, horrified, the girl was unable to continue with her eyes open.

In the next day, she looked for the trapdoor in the bedroom floor, but found nothing. At the second night, the same thing happened. The dog appeared and, again, the girl didn't have the strength to look.

On the third night, the created princess gathered courage and she took a deep breath. It was already past midnight. The palace seemed to be plunged into silence of death.

Once again, the trap door opened in the floor of the room, allowing the puppy. The animal walked on two legs, dragging its furry tail on the ground.

The maid just watched. The monster approached the mute princess, placed a golden ring on her finger and kissed her for a long time. Then he went back to the trapdoor and disappeared.

Quickly, the maid jumped up and ripped the ring off her finger, threw it out the window and went back to bed.

Before dawn, the dog came back and kissed the poor girl again. When he noticed that the ring was gone, he became very agitated. Searched the beds of the two girls, he spoke incomprehensible things, sniffed and crouched on the floor, examining the four corners of the room.

The day was dawning. Yelping desperately in the sun's rays, the dog jumped onto the trapdoor and disappeared.

The next day, the mute princess woke up talking.

The charm had worn off broken. And the girl called people by name. And she sang. And she screamed. And she danced.

Crying with happiness, the king organized a party, inviting the people and nobles of the Kingdom.

After a while, another request came from far away. Now there was a king who already didn't even sleep because I was so worried.

His son had met a girl one day at the middle of the forest. The youth fell madly in love but she had disappeared. The king was distressed.

His son, previously a giant of strength and health, had fallen ill and could not He no longer wanted to eat or know anything. For the young man, life no longer made sense apart from that maiden.

The princess who had once gotten lost in the forest felt that she must answer at the request of that desperate father and traveled. She found the poor prince lying in the bed, with eyes closed. The young man looked more dead than alive.

He held between hands a white glove. The maiden was surprised. It was exactly one of the gloves that she had lost one day in the forest.

"But I know that glove!"

She exclaimed. The youth remained motionless on the bed. The princess said that she owned that glove. The youth's voice came weak and hoarse:

"If that's true, you must have the other one."

"It's here in my hand!"

Replied the maiden. Only then did the prince open his eyes. When he saw the glove and then the girl, he gave a I jumped out of bed and, screaming, called my family.

He announced that he had found the person that he had been looking for so much and now he no longer felt like dying.

It was a day of enchantment and joy.

The princess revealed who she was and how she had gotten lost in the forest.

She cried. She said she missed her father. The prince asked the maiden to marry him. The princess's father was notified, and in less than a month, at the most beautiful party that ever happened, the wedding of the two young people was celebrated.

As bridesmaids came the princess who before could not speak and the other who, one day, was considered mad.

[cleopatragirlie]

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐲 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐞𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐦𝐮𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐕𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 '𝐋𝐮𝐝𝐰𝐢𝐠' (𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟑)

[tragediambulante]

Saint George and the Dragon, Paolo Uccello, 1470

[l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft]

READER AND AUTHOR SIDE OF TUMBLRRRRRR‼️‼️‼️

TELL ME IF THERE IS DEMAND FOR A RETELLING OF AN ITALIAN FOLKTALE REVOLVING AROUND THE CONSEQUENCES OF ONES ACTIONS, DECENT TO MADNESS, AND MURDER

AND MY LIFE

IS Y O U R S‼️‼️

[retrocatastrophy]

Di Fiaba in Fiaba (1997) by Giovanni Giannini & Violen Illne

[nichigin]

I am having such a like. Emotional moment abt Lou using the story of Pinocchio from such a personal and new angle and intersecting it w his experience as a black man in a way that is so true to the character. Like if this is not an amazing example in favor of why playing w old tropes and narratives and making them diverse and inclusive is not only good for people but good for storytelling I don't know what is!!!

[mask131]

A fantasy read-list: B-2

Part B: The First Classical Fantasy

2) On the other side, a century of France... 

As I said in my previous post, for this section I will limit myself to two geographical areas: on one side the British Isles (especially England/Scotland), and now France. More specifically, the France of fairytales! 

Maybe you didn’t know, but the genre of fairy tales, and the very name “fairy tale” was invented by the French! Now, it is true that fairytales existed long before that as oral tales spread from generations to generations, and it is also true that fairy tales had entered literature and been written down before the French started to write down their own... But the fairytale genre as we know it today, and the specific name “fairy tale”, “conte de fées”, is a purely French AND literary invention. 

# If we really want to go back to the very roots of fairy tales in literature, the oldest fairytale text we have still today, it would be a specific segment of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass (or The Metamorphoses depending on your favorite title). In it, you find the Tale of Psyche and Cupid, and this story, which got MASSIVELY popular during the Renaissance, is actually the “original” fairytale. In it you will find all sorts of very common fairytale tropes and elements (the hidden husband one must not see, the wicked stepmother imposing three impossible tasks, the bride wandering in search of her missing husband and asking inanimate elements given a voice...), as well as the traditional fairytale context (an old woman telling the story to a younger audience to carry a specific message). In fact, all French fairytale authors recognized Psyche and Cupid as an influence and inspiration for their own tales, often making references to it, or including it among the “fairytales” of their time. 

# The French invented the genre and baptized it, but the Italian started writing the tales and began the new fashion! The first true corpus, the first literary block of fairytales, is actually dating from the 16th century Italy. Two authors, Straparola and Basile, inspired by the structure, genre and enormous success of Boccace’s Decameron, published two anthologies respectively titled, Piacevoli Notti (The Facetious Nights) and the Pentamerone, or The Tale of Tales. These books were anthologies of what we would call today fairytales, stories of metamorphosed princes, and fairies, and ogres, and magical animals, and bizarre transformations, and curses needing to be broken, and damsels needing to be rescued... In fact, these books contain the “literary ancestors” and the “literary prototypes” of some of the very famous fairytales we know today. The ancestors of Sleeping Beauty (The Sun, the Moon and Thalia), Cinderella (Cenerentola), Snow-White (Lo cuorvo/The Raven), Rapunzel (Petrosinella) or Puss in Boots (Costantino Fortunato, Cagliuso)... 

However be warned: these books were intended to be licentious, rude and saucy. They were not meant to be refined and delicate tales - far from it! Scatological jokes are found everywhere, many of the tales are sexual in nature, there’s a lot of very gory and bloody moments... It was basically a series sex-blood-and-poop supernatural comedies where most of the characters were grotesque caricatures or laughable beings. We are far, far away from the Disney fairytales... 

# The big success and admiration caused by the Italian works prompted however the French to try their hand at the genre. They took inspiration from these stories, as well as from the actual oral fairytales that were told and spread in France itself, and turned them into literary works meant to entertain the salons and the courts. This was the birth of the French fairytale, at the end of the 17th century - and the birth of the fairytale itself, since the name “fairy tale” was invented to designate the work of these authors. 

The greatest author of French fairytale is, of course, Charles Perrault with his Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé (Stories or Tales of the Past), mistakenly referred to by everyone today as Les Contes de Ma Mère L’Oie (Mother Goose Fairytales - no relationship to the Mother Goose of nursery rhymes). Charles Perrault is today the only name remembered by the general public and audience when it comes to fairytales. He is THE face of fairytales in France and part of the “trio of fairytale names” alongside Grimm and Andersen. He wrote some of the most famous fairytales: Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Cinderella... He also wrote fairytales that are considered today classics of French culture, even though they are not as well known internationally: Donkey Skin, Diamonds and Toads or Little Thumbling. The first Disney fairytale movies (Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella) were based on his stories! 

But another name should seat alongside his. If Charles Perrault was the father of fairytales, madame d’Aulnoy was their mother. She was for centuries just as famous and recognized as Charles Perrault - when Tchaikovsky made his “Sleeping Beauty” ballet, he made heavy references to both Perrault and d’Aulnoy - only to be completely ignored and erased by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for all sorts of reasons (including the fact she was a woman). But Madame d’Aulnoy had stories translated all the way to Russia and India, and she wrote twice more fairytales as Perrault, and she was the author of the very first chronological French fairytale! (L’Ile de la Félicité, The Island of Felicity). Her fairytales were compiled in Les Contes des Fées (The Tales of Fairies), and Contes Nouveaux, ou Les Fées à la mode (New Tales, or Fairies in fashion) - and while for quite some times madame d’Aulnoy fell into obscurity, many of her tales are still known somehow and stayed classics that people could not attribute a name to. The White Doe (an incorrect translation of “The Doe in the Wood), The White Cat, The Blue Bird, The Sheep, Cunning Cinders, The Orange-Tree and the Bee, The Yellow Dwarf, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks (an incorrect translation of “Beauty with Golden Hair”), Green Serpent... 

A similar warning should be held as with the Italian fairytales - because the French fairytales aren’t exactly as you would imagine. These fairytales were very literary - far away from the short, lacking, simplified folklore-like tales a la Grimm. They were pieces of literature meant to be read as entertainment for aristocrats and bourgeois, in literary salons. As a result, these pieces were heavily influenced (and heavily referenced) things such as the Greco-Roman poems, or the medieval Arthuriana tales, and the most shocking and vulgar sexual and scatological elements of the Italian fairytales were removed (the violence and bloody part sometimes also). But it doesn’t mean these stories were the innocent tales we know today either... These fairytales were aimed at adults, and written by adults - which means, beyond all the cultural references, there are a lot of wordplays, social critics, courtly caricatures and hidden messages between the lines. The sexual elements might not be overtly present for example, but they are here, and can be found for those that pay attention. These stories have “morals” at the end, but if you pay attention to the tale and read carefully, you realize these morals either do not make any sense or are inadequated to the tales they come with - and that’s because fairy tales were deeply subversive and humoristic tales. People today forgot that these fairytales were meant to be read, re-read, analyzed and dissected by those that spend their days reading and discussing about it - things are never so simple... 

# While Perrault and d’Aulnoy are the two giants of French fairytales, and the ones embodying the genre by themselves, they were but part of a wider circle of fairytale authors who together built the genre at the end of the 17th century. But unfortunately most of them fell into obscurity... Perrault for example had a series of back-and-forth coworks with a friend named Catherine Bernard and his niece mademoiselle Lhéritier, both fairytale authors too. In fact, the “game” of their “discussion through their work” can be seen in a series of three fairytales that they wrote together, each author varying on a given story and referencing each-other in the process: Catherine Bernard wrote Riquet à la houppe (Riquet with the Tuft), Charles Perrault wrote his own Riquet à la houppe in return, and mademoiselle Lhéritier formed a third variation with the story Ricdin-Ricdon. Other fairytale authors of the time include madame de Murat/comtesse de Murat, mademoiselle de La Force, or Louise de Bossigny/comtesse d’Auneuil. Yes, the fairytale scene was dominated by women, since the fairytale as a genre we perceived as “feminine” in nature. There were however a few men in it too, alongside Perrault, such as the knight de Mailly with his Les Illustres Fées (Illustrious Fairies) or Jean de Préchac with his Contes moins contes que les autres (Fairy tales less fairy than others). 

A handful of these fairytales not written by either Perrault or d’Aulnoy ended up translated in English by Andrew Lang, who included them in his famous Fairy Books. For example, The Wizard King, Alphege or the Green Monkey, Fairer-than-a-Fairy (The Yellow Fairy Book) or The Story of the Queen of the Flowery Isles (The Grey Fairy Book).

# These people were however only the first wave, the first generation of what would become a “century of fairytales” in France. After this first wave, the publication of a new work at the beginning of the 18th century shook French literature: Antoine Galland translation+rewriting of The One Thousand and One Nights, also known later as The Arabian Nights. This work created a new wave and passion in France for “Arabian-flavored fairytales”. Everybody knows the Arabian Nights today, thanks to the everlasting success of some of its pieces (Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, The Tale of Scheherazade...), but less people know that after its publication in France tons of other books were published, either translating-rewriting actual Arabian folktales, or completely inventing Arabian-flavors fairytales to ride on the new fashion. Pétis de la Croix published Les Milles et Un Jours, Contes Persans, “The One Thousand and One Days, Persian tales” to rival Galland’s own book. Jean-Paul Bignon wrote a book called Les Aventures d’Abdalla (The Adventures of Abdalla), and Jacques Cazotte a fairytale called La Patte de Chat (The Cat’s Paw). I could go on to list a lot of works, but to show you the “One Thousand and One” mania - after the success of 1001 Nights and 1001 Days, a man called Thomas-Simon Gueulette came to bank on the phenomenon, and wrote, among other things, The One Thousand and One Hours, Peruvian tales and The One Thousand and One Quarter-of-Hours, Tartar Tales. 

# Then came what could be considered either the second or third “wave” or “generation” of fairytales. It is technically the third since it follows the original wave (Perrault and d’Aulnoy times, end of the 17th) and the Arabian wave (begining of the 18th). But it can also be counted as the second generation, since it was the decision in the mid 18th century to rewrite French fairytales a la Perrault and d’Aulnoy, rejecting the whole Arabian wave that had fallen over literature. So, technically the “return” of French fairytales. 

The most defining and famous story to come of this generation was, Beauty and the Beast. The version most well-known today, due to being the shortest, most simplified and most recent, was the one written by Mme Leprince de Beaumont, in her Magasin des Enfants. Beaumont’s Magasin des Enfants was heavily praised and a great best-seller at the time because she was the one who had the idea of making fairytales 1- for children and 2- educational, with ACTUAL morals in them, and not fake or subversive morals like before. If people think fairytales are sweet stories for children, it is partially her fault, as she began the creation of what we would call today “children literature”. However Leprince de Beaumont did not invent the Beauty and the Beast fairytale - in truth she rewrote a previous literary version, much longer and more complex, written by madame de Villeneuve in her book La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins (The Young American Girl and the sea tales). Madame de Villeneuve was another fairy-tale author of this “fairytale renewal”. Other names I could mention are the comtesse de Ségur, who wrote a set of fairytales that were translated in English as Old French Fairytales (she was also a defender of fairytales being made into educational stories for children), and mademoiselle de Lubert, who went the opposite road and rather tried to recreate subversive, comical, bizarre fairytales in the style of madame d’Aulnoy - writing tales such as Princess Camion, Bear Skin, Prince Glacé et Princesse Etincelante (Prince Frozen and Princess Shining), Blancherose (Whiterose)... 

Similarly to what I described before, a lot of these fairytales ended up in Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books. Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess, Prince Darling (The Blue Fairy Book), Rosanella, The Fairy Gifts (The Green Fairy Book)... 

# The “century of fairy tales” in France ended up with the publication of one specific book - or rather a set of books. Le Cabinet des Fées, by Charles-Joseph Meyer. As we reached the end of the 18th century, Meyer noticed that fairy tales had fallen out of fashion. None were written anymore, nobody was interested in them, nothing was reprinted, and a lot of fairytales (and their authors) were starting to fall into oblivion. Meyer, who was a massive fan of fairytales, hated that, and decided to preserve the fairytale genre by collecting ALL of the literary fairytales of France in one big anthology. It took him four years of publication, from 1785 to 1789, but in a total of forty-one books he managed to collect and compile the greatest collection of French literary fairytales that was ever known - even saving from destruction a handful of anonymous fairytales we wouldn’t know existed today if it wasn’t for his work. In a paradoxical way, while this ultimate collection did save the fairytale genre from disappearing, it also marked the end of the “century of fairytales”, as it set in stone what had been done before and marked in the history of literature the fairytale genre as “closed off”. All the French fairytales were here to be read, and there was nothing more to add. 

Ironically, Le Cabinet des Fées itself was only reprinted and republished a handful of times, due to how big it was. The latest reprints are from the 19th century if I recall correctly - and after that, there was a time where Le Cabinet was nowhere to be found except in antique shops and private collections. It is only in very recent time (the late 2010s) that France rediscovered the century of fairytales and that new reprints came out - on one side you have cut-down and shortened versions of Le Cabinet published for everybody to read, and on the other you have extended, annotated, full reprints of Le Cabinet with additional tales Meyer missed that are sold for professional critics, teachers, students and historians of literature. But the existence of Le Cabinet, and Meyer’s great efforts to collect as much fairytales as possible, would go on to inspire other men in later centuries, inciting them to collect on their own fairytales... Men such as the brothers Grimm. 

[dragon-fly34]

The proctetive group of mareach chapter 1 (part 2)

Summary: Toadette agrees to help the gang and saves Mario & Peach's date.

//----------------------------------//---------------------------------------//

"Toadette comes out from under the sofa angry and confused at the same time, she couldn't understand what is happend:

"Toadette why you are spying on us?!" Ask Daisy

"Because Luigi and Yoshi was on Peach's castle seeing some pictures and when I try to see, they saw that was nothing! But them was spying Mario and Peach!" Say Toadette pointing the finger at Luigi

"Okay Toadette! I going to explain what we are doing, we was spying Mario and Peach, because we was seeing if was koopas" explain Luigi

"Koopas?"Ask Toadette confuse

"We found out that Bowser sent koopas to work on Mario and Peach, so we're spying on them and we're going to attack them today"

"Wait, so you're making sure Mario and Peach are okay?"

"Yes" said Toad

"Then I'm going to help you! If not, I'm going to tell Mario and Peach everything" said Toadette, crossing her arms

The group met and began to discuss:

"What should we do?"

"Are we going to trust Toadette or not?"

"Luigi what are we going to do?"

Everyone looked at Luigi, he soon thought and had an answer.

"I know what to do! Don't worry guys"

Luigi turned to Toadette and crouched down so she could look at him.

"Toadette, if you save Mario and Peach's meeting, you'll join the group" Luigi said and made everyone surprised and then Donkey Kong interrupted

"Luigi, are you crazy? We don't know if we can trust her or not!"

"Donkey Kong, you know that I've helped Mario a lot and especially Peach"

"Estamos dando tu palabra Toadette" Daisy said, crouching down until she was Toadette's size.

*Later that night*

"Have a good party my hero!"

"Sì amore mio!"

Mario and Peach were dancing at a party in MK, they were having a lot of fun, Toadette was on the other side of the party, she had just arrived and was talking on her cell phone.

"I'm entering the party, I already saw Mario and Peach, no Koopa in the area" Toadette said with her cell phone.

"Don't forget Toadette, there are 6 Koopas, two red, two yellow and two blue, use the Super Crown" Luigi said sitting on the sofa in his house.

Toadette took the Super Crown she had brought, she and Toad hunted for Power-ups for MK, she transformed into Peachette, she also wore a dress that Daisy had lent her for the plan.

She soon spotted two disguised Koopas, she grabbed a glass and threw it at them without anyone noticing, then she spotted the others, they soon prepared to fight, but she started fighting, until the others saw her.

"THEY ARE TRYING TO ROB ME!"

Everyone heard and went to help Peachette, Mario called the guards and the Koopas were arrested, he approached Peachette without recognizing her.

""Are you okay, young lady?" Mario asked

"Yes I am, thank you Mr. Mario" Peachette replied disguising her voice

"Wait, where did you buy that dress?" Mario asked looking at his dress. "It looks like one of Princess Daisy's dresses."

"Ah... I-I have a cousin who bought Sarasaland for me!" Peachette replied in a lie.

"Wow, your cousin must be rich," Mario said laughing. "The princess told me these are the most expensive in Sarasaland."

"Yeah..." Peachette said with a fake laugh "I-I have to go, bye and have a good party!"

Peachette ran off and went to Mario and Luigi's house, she knocked on the door and waited. The group was gathered in the room waiting for Toadette, Yoshi soon spoke.

"Why is Toadette taking so long?"

"We knew we shouldn't trust him!" Donkey Kong said, crossing his arms.

"Tranquilos muchachos, a veces toma un tiempo, recuerdan cuando me tocó a mí? También tomó un tiempo" Daisy said as she hugged Luigi, soon they heard a knock on the door.

"Open the door, Toad!" Luigi said, pointing to the door.

"Why me?"

"Because you're in my house, go now!"

Toad got off the couch and went to answer the door, there was Peachette, all happy.

"I ACHIEVED!" Shouted Peachette jumping for joy while the others were surprised.

"Really Toadette?!" Luigi said, getting up from the sofa and going to Peachette.

"Yes Luigi, I gave my word and you gave yours" Peachette replied "so I'm in the group?"

"Well since I'm the leader of the group, then yes, when I make a promise, I keep it" Luigi said "Then yes Toadette you are in the group"

Peachette hugged Luigi and hugged her while the others celebrated, now Toadette was part of the Protective Group of Mareach."

//---------------------------------//---------------------------------------//

Did you like the story? Give me your opinions

[wurdulac]

pet peeve of mine is seeing ppl gushing about and making cutesy funny content abt raphael and gort on nexus... i like gort but not raphael and when i like a pathetic male character i need to make fun of him. it's good. keeps things humble. but i can't stand sensing the vibe of making them into loveable fools or sth.

[adarkrainbow]

The Tale of Tale movie analysis (1)

It has been a long time since I did a fairytale movie analysis, and for this month I want to take a look at a movie that has been asked of me before, a long time ago: "Tale of Tales".

For those of you who do not know about this movie, "Tale of Tales" is a 2015 movie, a "European production" (it is an Italian movie, but it received help and collaboration from France and England, hence the "European" etiquette) that is to this day (and to my knowledge) the only movie that adapts Basile's Pentamerone, the titular "Tale of Tales".

The Pentamerone being one of the two foundational works when it comes to literary fairytales, and one of the two great books of classical Italian literary fairytales alongside Straparole's Facetious Nights. Basile's book is very famous for containing some of the earlier literary records of fairytale types such as Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, The Girl Without Hands, and more.

The book contains a total of fifty stories, and of course the movie couldn't adapt them all, so it was decided to only adapt three in total. The three chosen are usually considered emblematic stories of the Pentamerone - but they were also selected because they do not echo the more well known Grimm stories. The three selected were, The Flea, The Enchanted Doe, and The Flayed Old Lady - all taken from the first part of the book.

Note that this movie was greatly acclaimed for its extensive use of practical special effects - and there is one thing you cannot deny this movie, it looks absolutely incredible. There is a great effort on the visuals ranging from selected architecture and landscape to careful costume crafting and delightful monsters on screen.

Before going into the analysis of each of the fairytales of the movie, I wanted to point out a few things covering the entirety of the movie. Three details to be exact.

Matteo Garrone, when doing this movie, didn't just randomly selected three stories that were to his fancy. He chose three specific stories that he then tied together with cohesive themes and motifs. The first of which, the most prominent, being "obsession". Each segment is about presenting the obsessions of specific characters, and the bad outcomes of it.

The other shared motif between the three fairytales is "the ages of a woman". Despite the movie having as much male as female characters, Garrone explained very clearly that this movie was about the women, not the men, and that each fairytale represented one of the traditional three "ages of woman". "The Flea" becomes the Maiden story, focusing on the young princess ; "The Enchanted Doe" becomes the Mother story, with an exploration of the character of the queen, while "The Flayed Old Lady" is of course the Crone tale.

But much more importantly for us to understand this movie: Matteo Garrone did one very heavy and important change compared to the original material. The tone. The tone is radically different. Basile's original book, just like Straparole's fairytales, worked by the specific nature of these Italian literary fairytales of the time: they were grotesque farces, and vulgar jokes. In my last post about the Pentamerone I compared these stories to a Brandon Rogers video, because Basile's stories, despite being the ancestors of the Grimm or Perrault fairytales, are nothing like the modern fairytales we are today. They are sex stories filled with caricatures, they are gruesome, gory stories filled with morally-gray characters, they are one huge dark joke filled with poop and farts and vulgar allusions. They are much closer to medieval tales and to the tone of a Reynard the Fox story or some Rabelais books than any other fairytales we know today. But Garrone decided to apply a principle that you can see explored in series such as "Horace and Pete" or "Kevin can fuck himself". Take a sitcom, remove the laugh-track, you have a tragedy. Garrone's movie is still as grotesque as the original stories - but now the jokes are put aside, the most vulgar parts removed, the sex and the gore examined for what it is under a realistic eye. This "realistic", and "non-comical" treatment of the stories make this world of grotesque caricatures and senseless violence and depraved debauchery one not of marvels and fairies, but one of tragedies, of abuse, of horror. But, tragedies with magic, abuse with beauty, horror with happy and hopeful endings - because they stay fairytales after all, no matter how dark they are. Mean, cruel, sad fairytales, but fairytales nonetheless.

[Trivia: The fact that Basile's work was a very rude, crude and vulgar piece of sex-and-violence that can only be compared to Rabelais meeting Punch & Judy, is something many people in the English-speaking world completely missed because the first real popular and widespread translations of the text in English, in the... I think it was the 19th century or maybe a bit earlier ; but these versions were heavily censored. Trying to make the story more like a Perrault or d'Aulnoy tale, they removed many sex references, remove all the poop jokes, and even cut off some stories deemed too vulgar ot gruesome, so that for a very long time people thought they were supposed to be... regular fairytales. This is especially relevant with "Thalia, the Sun and the Moon", Basile's "Sleeping Beauty" variant. Many people point out that the girl in this story gets raped by the prince and that this shows how the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty was built on a glorification of rape, because it is treated as ormal or as some romance. But... no. This rape is treated as a rape and the prince is very clearly a lustful asshole who is taking advantage of the girl - because it is a dark sex-tale. Princes in the Pentamerone are almost all lustful rapists, violent murderers or complete helpless idiots, because the Pentamerone does not work on a "prince charming" logic. Take "The Golden Root" - the handsome, kind, gentle, good prince that seems to fit the bill of the Prince Charming... is part of a family of ogres, and ends up murdering in rage his intended fiancée just to be married to the heroine of the tale. And that's something that many people missed for a very long time - the prince charming archetype is from the French tales of the 17th and 18th century, not before.]

[adarkrainbow]

Fascinating! I knew that every country has its own equivalent of the ogrish figure saying "I smell X". The giants of England or the trolls of Norway smell "Christian blood", the French ogres smell "fresh meat" or "fresh flesh", the German devil smells "man's flesh"...

But I had never asked myself when or why the simple line "I smell X" becomes an actual rhyme...

Ma da dove viene la rima dell'orco?

"Ucci, ucci,

Sento odor di cristianucci!"

Potrebbe sembrare scontato chiederselo, abbiamo sentito tutti questi versetti mostruosi dalla bocca dell'orco di Pollicino o del gigante di Jack e il fagiolo magico. Ma a pensarci bene non possono venire da queste fiabe: l'orco non ha alcuna rima nel testo originale dei Racconti di Mamma Oca, di Charles Perrault, e nelle versioni inglesi, il gigante di Jack dice una filastrocca del tutto diversa da quella italiana: "Fee-fi-fo-fum/ I smell the bones of an englishman!". Già le parole iniziali non corrispondono per nulla nei suoni, ma piuttosto che alla fede ci si riferisce alla nazionalità (se volete saperne di più riguardo alla storia di quella filastrocca, potete leggervi questo post di @adarkrainbow). Tralaltro, l'uso di "cristiano" come sinonimo di "umano" è tipico di modi di dire ed espressioni italiane, quindi se anche fosse stato un adattamento dall'inglese, il traduttore dovrà aver saputo il fatto suo sul linguaggio fiabesco italiano.

E quindi? Da dov'è che sono spuntati fuori questi versetti? Io un'idea ce l'avrei, ma non so bene come siano arrivati alle altre fiabe, come abbiano raggiunto questa fama.

Fatto sta, che nel 1885 il famoso studioso di fiabe siciliano Giuseppe Pitrè pubblica la raccolta novelle popolari toscane, tra le quali spicca per noi la n. XXIV, Il diavolo fra i frati, raccontata da Rosina Casini a Fabbriche. Per chi conoscesse le fiabe dei Grimm, questa è una versione del Diavolo dai tre capelli d'oro: un re si ammala, il suo servo fedele va alla ricerca della cura, una penna di una bestia favolosa, e sul suo cammino incontra tanti disgraziati che gli chiedono penne e consigli; questi li riesce a prendere la moglie della bestia, che, nascosto il servo dalla fame del marito, gli strappa le penne per "svegliarlo e chiederli cosa significhino i suoi sogni". Ora, la bestia, entrata a casa grida:

"Mucci mucci, /Oh che puzzo di cristianucci!/ O ce n’è, o ce n’è stati,/ O ce n’è de’ rimpiattati."

ed eccola qua, la rima orchesca! Perché anche se in altre fiabe la "bestia piumata" è qualcosa come un grifone, in questa storia ha proprio il comportamento da orco. Lo pensava anche Calvino quando inserì la novella tra le sue Fiabe Italiane cambiò il titolo in L'orco con le penne, mantenendo sempre la filastrocca:

"Mucci mucci, / Qui c'è puzza di cristianucci / O ce n'è, o ce n'è stati / O ce n'è di rimpiattati."

Anche se non tutti la conoscono, la sua raccolta ebbe una grande influenza nella conoscenza degli italiani del loro patrimonio fiabesco. La Prezzemolina di Imbriani è abbastanza conosciuta, e dalla stessa raccolta è anche tratta la fiaba che ispirò la miniserie televisiva Fantaghirò. Probabilmente è da questa raccolta di Calvino che la filastrocca è entrata nell'immaginario fiabesco generale degli orchi.

In realtà ci sono anche altri aspetti che il Pollicino che conosciamo noi possa esser stato influenzato da Calvino. Una delle prime traduzioni di Perrault, da parte di Collodi, rende il nome Petit-Poucet come Puccettino. Mentre le fiabe italiane hanno sia un Pulcino (nell'omonima fiaba pugliese, uguale per trama a quella francese) e un Pollicino (citato solo come sposo nelle rime di Gallo Cristallo).

Però per accertarsi di queste cose bisognerebbe controllarne altre edizioni di queste fiabe. Se qualcuno riesce a scovarne, ce lo faccia pure sapere!

Provo a metter 'sta roba anche in inglese, magari interessa a qualcuno:

You know that rhyme the giants in english fairy tales say? "Fee-fi-fo-fum/I smell the bones of an englishman!" Well, we have a similar one in italy: "Ucci, ucci/ sento odor di cristianucci!" "Ucci, ucci/ I smell little christians" (for the longest time "cristiano" was used as a synonym to human. It still is by some people). It gets mostly used in Perrault's Little Thumbling by the ogre or in Jack and the beanstalk by the giant. But it doesn't come from these stories. Perrault didn't use any rhymes and the verses from Jack are way too different.

So where did this come from? I might have an idea, but I'm not entirely certain how it reached national knowledge.

Point is, in 1885 the great sicilian folk tale scholar Giuseppe Pitrè published a collection of tuscan folk tales, novelle popolari toscane. Of these, n. XXIV, Il diavolo fra i frati (the devil among friars), told by Rosina Casini from Fabbriche, sticks out to us. For those of you familiar with the Grimms' tales, this is a version of the Devil with the three golden hairs: a king gets sick, his faithful servant sets out to find the cure, a feather from a magic beast, and on his way he finds many unfortunate people, asking for magic feathers and solutions as well. These are all coaxed out from the feathered beast by his helpful wife, who wakes him at night by pulling his feathers and telling him of "the weird dreams she just had!". Now, when this beast frist comes home, it says this:

"Mucci mucci, /Oh che puzzo di cristianucci!/ O ce n’è, o ce n’è stati,/ O ce n’è de’ rimpiattati." ("Mucci, mucci/ oh what stink of little christians!/ There either are, or there have been,/ or there are hidden away.")

There it is, our ogrish rhyme! Because even if this "feathered beast" is in some versions of the story a griffin, it has the same behavior of an ogre. Which is why, when Italo Calvino put this tale among his Italian folk tales, he changed the title to the feathered ogre, while keeping tge verses:

"Mucci mucci, / Qui c'è puzza di cristianucci / O ce n'è, o ce n'è stati / O ce n'è di rimpiattati."

While not everyone knows this collection, it had a big influence in italians being more in-touch with their body of fairy tales. Imbriani's Prezzemolina is fairly well known now, and the same collection also contains the fairy tale that inspired the "Cave of the golden rose" miniseries, Fantaghirò. It's probably Calvino's collection that brought a regional expression to a broader audience.

Calvino might have influenced in other ways the italian reception of little Thumbling as well: one of the first translations of this tale, by Carlo Collodi, keeps the sound of the original name (Petit Poucet) as Puccettino. The now well-known form Pollicino can be found in Calvino as a rhyming name in Crystal Rooster and in a similar form in an apulian version of Perrault's story (Pulcino, Chick).

Though, to be sure we'd need to check more editions

[dailystreetsnapshots]

Sterzing, Italy

[princess-ibri]

How will you adapt Puss in Boots into the DisneyVerse?

So I haven't figured out a full story yet, but I know it takes place in Renaissance Italy, that the ogre is masquerading as a wealthy human man (due to shape shifting abilities) and is angling to secure the hand of the lovely Princess Elisetta, and that Puss and the Miller's son Constantino will need to help stop him.

I based their designs somewhat after the drawings in a book that went with a Disneyland Record:

If it was a real movie I would love for the animation to invoke all the beautiful artworks that were being created at the time and there would definitely be lots of cameos of famous artists in it

[porcelain-requiem]

Years ago, I drew concept art for how I would adapt the Italian fairytale, Prunella, in a Disney-esque style. Recently, I got inspired to draw some new art of the characters.

I kept some aspects of the story the same, but changed it a bit on certain things. One of my biggest changes was in Bensiabel, the witch's son. I made him resemble his mother and made him mute.

So here are the following images, in order:

Prunella being threatened after being captured by the witch, Marcella.

Bensiabel trying to signal to Prunella that he can help her with one of the witch's impossible tasks that Prunella is supposed to complete. In this case, it's filling a basket with water. Prunella thinks he's trying to trick her, so she's scared of him.

Bensiabel using Italian sign language to say "te amo/I love you" to Prunella. I'm not fluent in sign language of any kind. I only know a few signs I use with my baby. But I found it online. So yay for that!

For more art of them, visit my deviantART gallery. Enjoy!