4/17/22

These stories range from the 14th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Some are familiar as the source of a couple of Shakespeare's plays:"The novel of Juliet" and "The moor of Venice", and others as well-known fairy tales: Gagliuso (Puss'nBoots) and the Cat Cinderella. I especially liked the lone story by a female author called "Giovannino or Death" which tells the tale of two lovers and the compromises that corrupt the soul of one of them to the detriment of their love. I also liked "The Medals", "The Fourth Wife" and "The Ruby".
Most of the writers I had never heard of before except for Boccacio, Machiavelli, Italo Svevo, Luigi Pirandello and Albert Moravia. I at first thought Moravia's story "Bitter Honeymoon" would be the basis of Roman Polanski's film "Bitter Moon" (a really bad movie by the way), but the stories are very different, unless you see the sexual distress of the male character as the link between the two. Overall, the stories were interesting, but not particularly memorable. Not having any knowledge of Italian letters, I don't know if many of the authors in this collection, aside from those I had already heard of, are still considered "great" authors.
The paperback itself started disintegrating as I read it, the paper is brown and crumbles easily, pages are falling out so I think I will have to put the remaining pages in the recycle bin.

Contains:
Anonymous, "St. Francis of Assisi Converts the Fierce Wolf of Gubbio"
Giovanni Boccaccio, "Saint Ciappelletto", "Masetto da Lamporecchio and the Nuns", "The Pot of Basil", "The Falcon"
Franco Sacchetti, "Three Blind Men"
Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Devil Takes a Wife"
Luigi da Porto, "The Novel of Juliet"
Matteo Bandello, "The Dead Lady and the Ape"
G. B. Giraldi Cintio, "The Moor of Venice"
Giambattista Basile, "Gagliuso", "The Cat Cinderella"
Gaspare Gozzi, "Three Stories About Venetian Women"
Giovanni Verga, "The She-Wolf", "Ieli"
Guido Nobili, "Idyl"
Matilde Serao, "Giovannino or Death"
Italo Svevo, "This Indolence of Mine"
Luigi Pirandello, "A Character in Distress", "War", "The Medals"
Aldo Palazzeschi, "Bistino and the Marquis"
Riccardo Bacchelli, "The Fourth Wife"
Corrado Alvaro, "The Ruby"
Giovanni Comisso, "Aminta"
Guido Piovene, "The Dressmaker's Daughter"
Alberto Moravia, "Bitter Honeymoon"
Elio Vittorini, "Stories from an Autobiography in Time of War" ( )