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Tag Archives: stories

Banned! — Le XIII Piacevoli Notti

27 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Tags

Beauty and the Beast, Caravaggio, cat, cats, Charles Perrault, fairy tales, folk tales, French, German, Giovanni Boccaccio, Giovanni Francesco Straparola, Giuseppe Rua, Grimm Brothers, Index of Prohibited Books, Italy, king, lies, magic, marry, Murano, ogre, Piacevoli Notti, Pope Clement VIII, princess, Prohibitorun, Puss-in-Boots, Shakespeare, Spanish, stories, supernatural, tales, truth, Venetia, Venice, vernacular, wealth

PQ4634-S7-P5-1580-title
“Of a truth I confess they [the tales] are not mine, and if I said otherwise I
should lie, but nevertheless I have faithfully set them down according to the manner in which they are told…”

Le XIII Piacevoli Notti…
Giovanni Francesco Straparola (ca. 1480- ca. 1557)
In Venetia: 1580
PQ4634 S7 P5 1580

Le XIII Piacevoli Nottie (The Pleasant Nights,) a collection of seventy-five stories, was first published in 1550 with twenty-five stories. Giovanni Straparola added stories to the next two editions, including what are considered to be the first “fairy tales” printed in a European vernacular. The collection of stories was reprinted in at least twenty-three editions between 1550 and 1620 and translated into German, Spanish, and French within only a few years after the first printing. The book was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books the year this edition was published, for its seeming justification of magic. Pope Clement VIII placed it on the Prohibitorum again in 1601. After 1608, the work was no longer published in Italy until Giuseppe Rua’s scholarly 1899-1908 edition.

Almost nothing is known of Giovanni Francesco Straparola except what he tells of himself in this book: he was from Caravaggio. Whoever he (or she) is, he is considered to be the progenitor of the literary form of the fairy tale. The surname “Straparola” is not a typical family name of the period or location. It is likely a nickname, meaning “babbler.” Straparola anthologized already-known folk tales and presented them to an urban audience. Straparola’s Nights is modeled after Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decamaron. Sixteen characters are engaged in a thirteen night-long party on the island of Murano, near Venice, and tell seventy-four stories that range from bawdy to fantastic. Straparola’s work was a sourcebook for Shakespeare.

Several of these tales, such as “Beauty and the Beast” and the cunning “Puss-in-Boots,” were retold and made famous by Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers. In “Puss-in-Boots” a cat is inherited by the youngest of three brothers. The cat — a lowly gift to the last, and therefore most redundant, son — requests of his master a pair of boots and, through a series of magic tricks (he is a cat, afterall!), proceeds to introduce his master to the king’s court and have the king’s princess-daughter fall in love and marry him. Supernatural indeed: a talking animal, an ogre and magical transformations — all bringing good results: the acquisition of wealth and a rise in social standing.

And that is why we love cats (and books) and, perhaps, why Pope Clement did not.

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We recommend — Weller Book Works Presents FEATHERS, PAWS, FINS and CLAWS

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Events, Recommended Lecture, Recommended Reading

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ancient, animals, Anne Jamison, bears, Charles Perrault, Christine A. Jones, dancing, Danish, European, fairy tales, feast, Fillings & Emulsions, folklorists, French, frog prince, German, Giovannie Francesco Straparola, girls, Grimm Brothers, historical, Hodder & Stoughton, human, Index of Prohibited Books, Jennifer Schacker, Jørgen Engebretsen Moe, Kay Nielsen, Lina Kusaite, Little Red Riding Hood, London, magic, mythology, Norway, Norwegian, ogres, pagan, Passion Flour, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, pigs, princess, punctuation, rare books, rats, Scandinavia, sheep, snakes, Spanish, spelling, stories, treats, Trolley Square, trolls, University of Guelph, University of Utah, Venetia, Venice, vernacular, Weller Book Works, witches, wolves

“It was all as grand as grand could be.”

Feathers-Paws-Fins-Cover

Feathers, Paws, Fins and Claws
Presentation and Reception
Christine A. Jones and Jennifer Schacker
Weller Book Works
Trolley Square
Thursday, May 26, 6:30PM

This event is free and open to the public

A wide variety of creatures walk, fly, leap, slither, and swim through fairy tale history. Marvelous animals are deeply inscribed in current popular culture — the beast redeemed by beauty, the frog prince released from enchantment by a young princess, wolves in pursuit of little girls and little pigs. Feathers, Paws, Fins, and Claws: Fairy-Tale Beasts presents lesser-known tales featuring animals, wild and gentle, who appear in imaginative landscapes and exhibit a host of surprising talents. The offbeat, haunting stories in this collection, illustrated by Lina Kusaite, are rich and relevant, and provoke the imaginations of readers of all ages.

Editors Christine Jones, University of Utah Associate Professor, and Jennifer Schacker, University of Guelph Associate Professor, chose ten stories that represent several centuries and cultural perspectives on fairy tale animals — rats as seductive as Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf, snakes who find human mates, dancing sheep and well-mannered bears. These beasts move between animal behavior and acts that seem more human than beastly. Each tale is presented as closely as possible to their original print versions, reflecting the use of historical spelling and punctuation.

Join Weller Book Works for a presentation by Jones and Schacker, and an interview by University of Utah Associate Professor Anne Jamison.

Read the tales, feast on treats from Fillings & Emulsions and Passion Flour, and have your very own copy of Feathers, Paws, Fins and Claws signed by the editors.

Feathers-Paws-Fins-Spread


Rare Books celebrates this publication with its own collection of fairy tales, including:

PQ4634-S7-P5-1580-title

Le XIII piaceuoli notti del S. Gio. Francesco Straparola di Carauaggion diuise in due libri…
Giovanni Francesco Straparola (ca. 1480- ca. 1557)
In Venetia: 1580
PQ4634 S7 P5 1580

The Pleasant Nights, a collection of seventy-five stories, was first published in 1550 with twenty-five stories. Giovanni Straparola added stories to the next two editions, including what are considered to be the first “fairy tales” printed in a European vernacular. The collection of stories was reprinted in at least twenty-three editions between 1550 and 1620 and translated into German, Spanish, and French within only a few years after the first printing. The book was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1624, for its descriptions and seeming justification of magic.

Several of these tales, such as “Beauty and the Beast” and “Puss-in-Boots,” were retold and made famous by Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers.


PT8802-N813-1924-Bear

East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885)
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1924
PT8802 N813 1924

First published in 1914 as a luxury gift book, East of the Sun and West of the Moon is a collection of fifteen fairy tales gathered by Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe in the mid-nineteenth century. The two spent years traveling across Norway transcribing local lore made up of trolls, ogres, and witches from the ancient pagan mythology of Scandinavia.

London publisher Holder and Stoughton chose Danish artist Kay Nielsen (1886-1957) to illustrate their publication of the tales. The book has since become one of the most well-known and well-beloved of children’s books.

PT8802-N813-1924-pg23
PT8802-N813-1924-pg44

alluNeedSingleLine

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Book of the Week – The Martian Chronicles

28 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by scott beadles in Book of the Week

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Tags

colonialism, colonization, Doubleday & Company, exploration, Garden City, human spirit, Mars, New York, novel, Pulitzer Prize, racial prejudice, Ray Bradbury, stories, war

PS3503-R167-M3-1950-inscriptionPS3503-R167-M3-1950-pg13PS3503-R167-M3-1950-pg96

The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)
Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1950
First edition
PS3503 R167 M3 1950

Ray Bradbury’s second novel is a collection of interconnected stories about the exploration and colonization of Mars. In these stories he addresses racial prejudice, colonialism, the devastation of war, and the triumph of the human spirit. In 2007, Bradbury received the Pulitzer Prize for his body of work.

alluNeedSingleLine

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