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emdoux's review
3.0
Stories I read: The Enchanted Doe, The Three Sisters, The She-Bear, The Raven, The Dragon, and Conclusion
mc7196's review against another edition
4.0
[a:Giambattista Basile|564689|Giambattista Basile|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1368965515p2/564689.jpg] is able to weave some strange and enchanting tales. Our modern fairytales seem like diluted reflections of some of the stories in this collection
blchandler9000's review against another edition
4.0
This was one of the more interesting fairy tale collections I have read.
Collected in the early 1600s by Basile, this book has some of the oldest versions of some of the better-known fairy tales (e.g., Puss In Boots). But it also holds some very bizarre fairy tales I'd never read before. Many of them use plot devices familiar to any folklore buff—like the wicked stepmother, super-talented helpers, ogres of all kinds, enchanted beauties hidden in animal skins or fruit, hidden objects, and (of course) fairies—but they're all recombined in new ways. A story that seems like it's going the Hansel and Gretel route ends up with the girl living inside a giant fish. One tale I was sure would end up being Sleeping Beauty suddenly involves mysterious children named Sun and Moon and a jealous queen who solves problems through cannibalism. Many of the stories are almost off-handedly violent, speaking of characters' murders in such matter-of-fact ways that it seems almost mundane if it weren't so shocking. Some tales have little hints of sexual overtones and nudity as well, but that too is written without the wink and nudge you'd expect. The straight-forwardness was almost refreshing.
The stories are written in elaborate prose using a lot of metaphor. Lines like, "So next morning, as soon as the Sun with his golden broom had swept away the dirt of the Night from the fields watered by the dawn..." are commonplace.
I would not recommend sitting down and reading this book in one sitting. I did not. I read stories between other books, as a way of cleansing my palate. (The version I found was free on Guttenberg, but it did not have all 50 stories from the original; the version I downloaded only had 30-some tales. I also wished it had illustrations, but sometimes you can't have it all...)
Collected in the early 1600s by Basile, this book has some of the oldest versions of some of the better-known fairy tales (e.g., Puss In Boots). But it also holds some very bizarre fairy tales I'd never read before. Many of them use plot devices familiar to any folklore buff—like the wicked stepmother, super-talented helpers, ogres of all kinds, enchanted beauties hidden in animal skins or fruit, hidden objects, and (of course) fairies—but they're all recombined in new ways. A story that seems like it's going the Hansel and Gretel route ends up with the girl living inside a giant fish. One tale I was sure would end up being Sleeping Beauty suddenly involves mysterious children named Sun and Moon and a jealous queen who solves problems through cannibalism. Many of the stories are almost off-handedly violent, speaking of characters' murders in such matter-of-fact ways that it seems almost mundane if it weren't so shocking. Some tales have little hints of sexual overtones and nudity as well, but that too is written without the wink and nudge you'd expect. The straight-forwardness was almost refreshing.
The stories are written in elaborate prose using a lot of metaphor. Lines like, "So next morning, as soon as the Sun with his golden broom had swept away the dirt of the Night from the fields watered by the dawn..." are commonplace.
I would not recommend sitting down and reading this book in one sitting. I did not. I read stories between other books, as a way of cleansing my palate. (The version I found was free on Guttenberg, but it did not have all 50 stories from the original; the version I downloaded only had 30-some tales. I also wished it had illustrations, but sometimes you can't have it all...)
crystallyn's review
5.0
The earliest versions of some of our most beloved fairytales including Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White and others, appear in this book. You can download this one for free from Gutenberg.
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