From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale. (Reviews).

Nancy L. Canepa, From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale.

Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. 333 pp. ISBN 0-8143-2758-3.

This volume is the first full-length study in English of Giambattista Basile's Cunto tie ii cunti, a masterpiece of Baroque narrative which the author aptly characterizes as a literary Cinderella. In her introductory Chapter 1, Canepa situates Basile's "literary" fairy tales in a theoretical context, distinguishing them from the popular folk tales analyzed by Propp and Luthi. Chapter 2, "The Life and Times of Giambattista Basile," describes the historical and cultural background of 17th-century Naples, the itinerant career of Basile, and the Italian courts and academies which were the locus of literary activity. Chapter 3, "The Cultural Background of Lo cunto de li cunti," examines the relations between popular Neapolitan culture and Basile's previous works in dialect: his Lettere (which evince a vivid nostalgia for Naples) and Le muse napoletane, a series of nine eclogues aimed at preserving the memory of Neapolitan culture.

The following chapters examine Basile's implicit critique of contemporary society. Chapter 4, "Rites of Initiation," argues for an overarching progression of themes within the tales and their frame, and discusses the satirical elements found in the eclogues that conclude the first four days. Chapter 5, "The Disenchantment of Power: Kings and Courtiers," views the incompetent kings of Basile's fables as veiled parodies of Spanish viceroys, and interprets fairy-tale courtiers as reflecting Basile's checkered career. Canepa's analysis is particularly cogent when it addresses the courtly themes of envy and ingratitude in Day 2 (introduced by a bitter eclogue on courtly disappointments) and examines the two contrasting brothers in tale IV.2 "Li dui fratielle." Chapter 6, "The Key to Success: Enterprising Heroes and Heroines," discusses tales in which Basile's protagonists, unlike the generally passive figures of fairy tales, demonstrate a sort of Renaissance ingegno: notable here are tales 1.6 "La gatta Cennerento la," with Zezolle as a feisty Cinderella, and 11.4 "Cagliuso," a variant of Puss in Boots. Chapter 7, "Significant Others: Ogres, Fools, and Forests," examines the central role of outsiders like ogres and fools, made emblematic by Basile's tale 1.1 "Lo cunto del l'uerco," in which an ogre aids the fool Antuono. Emblematically, fools are the protagonists in three of the first four tales in Basile's Day 1; yet although they typically blunder their way to success, the title character Vardiello (1.4) ends up in an asylum after finding a fortune for his mother. Chapter 8, "Marvelous Metaphor," discusses how Basile's metaphors negotiate linguistic and narrative metamorphosis, transforming classical and Petrarchan references into Baroque grotesques. Canepa also provides a typological analysis of Basile's elaborate similes of dawn and dusk. Chapter 9, "Epilogue: The Triumph of the Carnivalesque," recapitulates the author's insistence on Bakhtinian categories in interpreting Basile's fiction.

Like Basile's narratives, Canepa's study is dense, complex, and at times puzzling. Occasionally, it is hard to see Basile's forest for the trees (the clumps of material cited from critics and long citations of the original); and there are few clearings in Canepa's consistently elaborate prose of critical analysis. For example, when early in the work Zoza refuses to play a game, Canepa comments (93): "Is this her 'counterstatement' or answer within the game's frame? Or is this her reaction to all of this gaming, the entire 'game of games,' from a point of view outside of the game's frame (i.e., within her own frame, that of the cornice)?...The problem with this game, Zoza would imply, is that it does not go far enough in its cynical social critique that deconstructs without offering any other alternative." One almost wonders which dialect will triumph over time: 17th-century Neapolitan, or 20th-century MLA jargon?

All the same, a difficult original merits a challenging commentary, and Canepa's scholarship is solid and thoroughgoing. (Alas, Graham Anderson's Fairy Tale in the Ancient World -- which has useful remarks on Basile and on Heliodorus, whom he translated -- appeared too late for inclusion.) For many readers, this study will offer powerful incentive to read or revisit a fascinating text of the Italian Baroque.