Джамбаттиста Базиленің ертегілер жинағы: «Пентамерон»

Italian fairy tale collection by Giambattista Basile

The Pentamerone, subtitled Lo cunto de li cunti ("The Tale of Tales"), is a seventeenth century Neapolitan fairy tale collection by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile.

The stories in the Pentamerone were collected by Basile and published posthumously in two volumes by his sister Adriana in Naples, Italy, in 1634 and 1636 under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis. These stories were later adapted by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, the latter making extensive, acknowledged use of Basile's collection. Examples of this are versions of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel. While other collections of stories have included stories that would be termed fairy tales, his work is the first collection in which all the stories fit in that single category. He did not transcribe them from the oral tradition as a modern collector would, instead writing them in Neapolitan, and in many respects was the first writer to preserve oral intonations. The style of the stories is heavily Baroque, with many metaphorical usages. This has been interpreted as a satire on Baroque style, but as Basile praised the style, and used it in his other works, it appears to have no ironic intention.

The tales of Giambattista Basile are set in Basilicata and Campania, where he spent most of his life at the local nobles. Among the places related to the stories we find the city of Acerenza and the Castle of Lagopesole, the latter connected to the fairy tale Rapunzel.

The text was translated into German by Felix Liebrecht in 1846, into English by John Edward Taylor in 1847 and again by Sir Richard Francis Burton in 1893 and into Italian by Benedetto Croce in 1925. Another English translation was made from Croce's version by Norman N. Penzer in 1934. A new, modern translation by Nancy L. Canepa was published in 2007 by Wayne State University Press, and was later released as a Penguin Classics paperback in 2016.

The 2015 Italian film Tale of Tales, directed by Matteo Garrone, is generally based on stories from the collection, starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel and Toby Jones as protagonists of the tales "The Enchanted Doe", "The Flayed Old Lady" and "The Flea", respectively.