Pentamerone, secondary title of Giambattista Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones, 1634–6). The name Pentamerone appeared on the dedication page of the first edition, published posthumously. It was subsequently included on the title‐page in Pompeo Sarnelli's 1674 edition of Lo cunto; whether Basile had anything to do with this alternative title is uncertain.
The Pentamerone is composed of 49 fairy tales contained by a 50th frame story, also a fairy tale, and is the first such framed collection of literary fairy tales to appear in European literature. The tales are told in Neapolitan dialect by ten grotesque old women over five days; the end of the frame tale closes the collection. Days 2–5 are preceded by a banquet and entertainment, and days 1–4 conclude with eclogues in dialogue form that satirize contemporary social ills.
The frame tells of Princess Zoza, who has never laughed. Once she does laugh, a mysterious old woman tells her that she must rescue a certain prince Tadeo from a sleeping spell and then marry him. As she is completing the task necessary to wake him, she falls asleep and a black slave, Lucia, finishes the job. Tadeo awakes and marries Lucia. Zoza then moves into a palace facing Tadeo's and tempts Lucia, now pregnant, with three magic objects previously given to her by fairies. Lucia demands to have them; the last object instils in her the need to hear tales. Tadeo summons the best storytellers of his kingdom, and the first day begins.
The Pentamerone contains many famous fairy‐tale types, such as ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Puss‐in‐Boots’, and ‘Cinderella’, and held great interest for later fairy‐tale writers (in particular, the Grimms) and scholars. It constituted a culmination of the interest in popular culture and folk traditions that permeated the Renaissance, and was one of the most significant expressions of the baroque poetics of the marvellous and its thirst for discovering new inspirations for and forms of artistic expression. Structurally, Basile's tales are close to the oral tradition from which they draw. But through the use of Neapolitan as a literary language, the extravagant metaphor, and the abundant representations of the rituals of daily life, Basile's versions of these tales become a laboratory of rhetorical experimentation as well as an encyclopaedia of Neapolitan popular culture. In his work Basile also engages in a playfully polemical dialogue with contemporary society—especially courtly culture—and the canonical literary tradition, above all the Italian novella tradition, whose most illustrious exponent was Boccaccio.
Bibliography
- Canepa, Nancy L., From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile's ‘Lo cunto de li cunti’ and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale (1999).
- Croce, Benedetto, Intro. to Giambattista Basile, Il pentamerone (1982).
- Guaragnella, Pasquale, Le maschere di Democrito e Eraclito: Scritture e malinconie tra Cinque e Seicento (1990).
- Petrini, Mario, Il gran Basile (1989).
- Rak, Michele, Intro. to Giambattista Basile, Lo cunto de li cunti (1986).
— Nancy Canepa
