Giambattista Basile

Giambattista Basile

The Neapolitan Giambattista Basile (also Giovan Battista or Giovanni Battista Basile ; * 1575 in Giugliano in Campania (near Naples ); † February 23, 1632 in Giugliano in Campania) was an Italian writer and courtier of various princes. He wrote poems and plays and is considered to be Europe's first great storyteller thanks to his main work Il Pentamerone .

Life

Basile belonged to a respected middle-class family. In his youth he was a soldier in the Venetian service, during which time he began to write poetry. His first surviving literary production is a foreword from 1604 to the Vaiasseide of his friend, the Neapolitan writer Giulio Cesare Cortese. The following year his song Smorza crudel amore was set to music, and in 1608 he published his poem Il Pianto della Vergine (Lamentation of the Virgin). In the same year, the poet returned to Naples and was appointed court poet thanks to the support of his sister Adriana Basile , a well-known and influential singer . In 1611 Basile began his service with Luigi Carafa , Prince of Stigliano , and in the same year founded the Accademia degli Oziosi ( The Academy of Idlers ) at the prince's court, to which he dedicated his play Le avventurose disavventuree , together with the literati of Naples . Many well-known Neapolitans and Spaniards belonged to this literary academy, including Francisco de Quevedo . He then followed his sister Adriana to the court of Vincenzo I Gonzaga in Mantua , always part of the Accademia. In this city of Lombardy the madrigals , odes , Le Egloghe amorose e lugubri , the second revised and expanded edition of Il Pianto della Vergine and the drama in five acts La Venere addolorata were printed. In addition, Basile obtained, among other things, the first edition of the poems of Galeazzo by Tarsia. Another patron was Don Marino II Caracciolo, Prince of Avellino , to whom he dedicated his idyll L'Aretusa in 1618. His play Guerriero amante dates from the same year . When Basile died in 1632, he had achieved the status of Count (Conte di Torrone).

He was buried in the church of Santa Sofia in Giugliano, the town where he was born.

The pentameron

Basile's sister Adriana published his main work posthumously between 1634 and 1636 under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbattutis , an anagram of the author's name, and the title Lo cunto de li cunti, overo Lo trattenemiento de peccerille ( La fiaba delle fiabe ovvero come intrattenere i bambini , dt. “The fairy tale of fairy tales or entertainment for children”). From 1674 the collection was renamed Il Pentamerone (The Pentameron ), that is, five-day work.

• The fairy tales of the first day:

  1. The fairy tale of the giant monster, 2. The myrtle, 3. Peruonto, 4. Vardiello, 5. The flea, 6. Cenerentola ( Cinderella variant), 7. The merchant, 8.  The goat face , 9. The enchanted doe, 10.  The battered old woman

• The fairy tales of the second day:

  1. Parsley ( Rapunzel variant), 2. The green meadow, 3. Violet, 4. Pippo, 5. The snake, 6. The bear ( Allerleirauh variant), 7. The pigeon, 8.  The little slave (The Kitchen maid), 9. The padlock, 10. Buddy

• The fairy tales of the third day:

  1. Cannetella, 2. Penta with the chopped off hands (a variant of The Girl Without Hands ), 3. The face, 4. Sapia Liccarda, 5. The cockroach, the mouse and the cricket, 6. The garlic patch, 7 .  Corvetto , 8. Booby, 9.  Rosella , 10. The three fairies

• The fairy tales of the fourth day:

  1. The stone in the cock's head, 2. The two brothers, 3. The three enchanted princes, 4.  The seven small bacon rinds , 5.  The dragon , 6. The three crowns, 7. The two cakes (variant of The Fairies ), 8. The seven doves (variant of The Seven Ravens ), 9. The raven, 10. The punished pride (variant of King Thrushbeard )

• The fairy tales of the fifth day (the 10th by Zoza leads back to the framework plot, see below):

  1. The goose, 2. The months, 3. Pintosmalto, 4. The golden root (variant of Amor and Psyche ), 5. Sun, moon and Talia (variant of Sleeping Beauty ), 6.  Sapia , 7. The five sons, 8. Nennillo and Nennella (variant of little brother and sister ), 9. The three lemons (variant of The love for three oranges )

Like Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giovanni Boccaccio , Basile also invents a framework story. This framework of the Pentameron (lo cunto) is a fairy tale itself. This explains the title The fairy tale of fairy tales . While Boccaccio's Decamerone is structured in ten days with ten stories each, ten women in the Pentamerone tell fifty fairy tales in the Neapolitan dialect over five days, which Basile provided with a second frame of moralizing proverbs and sentences as well as historical and ironic additions. The author drew the acts from folk and oriental traditions as well as Greek mythology . Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm discovered many similarities to the orally handed down materials and motifs they had collected. In Basile, however, the first complete versions of many well-known fairy tales such as Cinderella , Puss in Boots , Snow White , Beauty and the Beast , The Frog Prince or Rapunzel can be found . The characteristic of this Neapolitan poetry is the connection of folk elements with a playful baroque narrative style that includes allegories , puns, wit and humor as well as wanton word variants and flourishes.

The pentameron was translated from Neapolitan into other languages ​​relatively late and served as an important source for later collectors and authors of fairy tales such as Charles Perrault , Clemens Brentano , Ludwig Tieck and the Brothers Grimm. The first complete German translation by Felix Liebrecht with a foreword by Jacob Grimm appeared in Breslau in 1846.

In 2015, the fairy tale of fairy tales, a film based on the literary model, was released. The director took Matteo Garrone .

Fonts

• The fairy tale of fairy tales. The pentameron. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46764-4
  (based on the Neapolitan text of 1634/36, newly translated and explained) .
  • 2nd edition: The fairy tale of fairy tales: the Pentamerone / Giambattista Basile; completely and newly translated and explained by Hanno Helbling [and 6 others] based on the Neapolitan text of 1634/1636; edited by Rudolf Schenda . CH Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-68629-0 .

literature

• Alberto Asor-Rosa:  Basile, Giambattista. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 7:  Bartolucci – Bellotto. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1965, pp. 76-81.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alberto Asor Rosa:  Basile, Giambattista. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 7:  Bartolucci – Bellotto. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1965, pp. 76-81.
2. ^ Lüthi, Max: fairy tales. Stuttgart, 1979, p. 48.
3. ^ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: Writings and speeches (Ed. Ludwig Deneke). Stuttgart 1985, pp. 108-110.

Web links

Commons : Giambattista Basile  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Giambattista Basile  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Giambattista Basile in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Giambattista Basile in the Gutenberg-DE project