This volume, which previously appeared as two volumes [1], is the first English translation of Sicilianische Märchen (1870), a book containing 92 folktales collected in Sicily in the 1860s by a Swiss woman, Laura Gonzenbach. Jack Zipes explains in his introduction how that work developed from an initial request by a friend who was writing a book about Sicily and asked Gonzenbach to collect a few tales to illustrate the local folklore. In this introduction, Zipes also addresses some of the striking qualities of the tales (that is, how they are different from the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen). Women are more prominent in the Sicilian tales; some of them are quite independent and others navigate through difficult relationships with their husbands. (This observation applies to many other folktale collections, especially those that have not been adapted for a juvenile readership.) Zipes also notes that parts of the Sicilian tales reflect their Mediterranean and Catholic origins: words (like spells) have real power, and saints interact with humans.
As Zipes points out, the original book featured comparative notes by the esteemed philologist of literature, Reinhold Köhler. Although these notes are still useful, they are too compressed for general readers and Zipes has replaced them with modern annotation. Tale type numbers are listed along with analogs from earlier times (many of the tales have literary antecedents) up through the nineteenth century. Thus, relevant comparative material is cited economically. Gonzenbach’s original title for the tales and their numbers in that collection are also provided (Zipes has rearranged the tales to break up groups of similar plots). See Luisa Rubini’s comprehensive notes to her Italian translation of the same tales, Fiabe siciliane (1999), for more references and more emphasis on oral tradition.
Readers will enjoy these varied tales, which include the usual folktale mixture of quests, encounters with ogres, unjust suffering, and cleverness, along with a few animal tales and religious legends. The tales contain elements that are found in medieval literature, Italian literary tale collections (Straparola’s and Basile’s in particular), foreign literary fairy tales, and folktales from Europe, the Middle East, and India. Zipes has an excellent sense of what appeals to modern readers, and he succeeds, here as in his other works, in making fairy tales an attractive subject.
Zipes’ enthusiasm has, however, led him to overstate both the importance and the obscurity of Gonzenbach’s collection. It is not, even “perhaps,” more important than the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen, which instituted a set of expectations for folktale style and content, made folktales a respectable genre for publication, and generated two century’s worth of international scholarship. Zipes’ statement that Gonzenbach’s collection was “more or less forgotten if not indeed buried” may apply to its publishing history but it belittles its considerable role in scholarly literature. Soon after its original publication (1870), this work was cited by the great Italian folklorist Giuseppe Pitrè and it has figured in all the appropriate Sicilian and Italian tale type indexes. Rudolf Schenda has been recommending Gonzenbach and her tales to the attention of folklorists since 1979. His notes to his translation of the Pentamerone (2000) make frequent reference to Gonzenbach’s work.
Two years after the publication of the first tale type index, in an effort to provide evidence for international tale types, Antti Aarne published a concordance of folktales (FFC 10, 1912) in five major collections by the Grimms (German), Grundtvig (Danish), Afanasiev (Russian), von Hahn (Greek and Albanian), and Gonzenbach (Sicilian). Gonzenbach may have benefitted here from Aarne’s preference for reading German since he might otherwise have used Pitrè’s collections instead. Gonzenbach’s tales have been used by authors of folktale monographs and also in shorter comparative notes such as Cosquin’s Contes populaires de Lorraine (1886) and Bolte and Polívka’s Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1913–1932, Bolte had previously edited Köhler’s further notes on Gonzenbach’s tales). Many individual tales have been reprinted or summarized, for example in Walter Scherf’s Das Märchenlexikon (1995).
It is good to have these tales available in an English translation with a scholarly apparatus. Lack of accessibility impedes internationally-oriented, comparative studies. The more high-quality folktales that are available in English, the better for folktale scholarship in America.
For scholars pursuing references from the original numbering system, here is a concordance to Zipes’ rearrangement:
Original no. 1 = Zipes’ no. 53; 2 = 56; 3 = 63; 4 = 87; 5 = 83; 6 = 81; 7 = 91; 8 = 80; 9 = 79; 10 = 62; 11 = 77; 12 = 50; 13 = 61; 14 = 76; 15 = 49; 16 = 47; 17 = 51; 18 = 16; 19 = 86; 20 = 46; 21 = 8; 22 = 52; 23 = 44; 24 = 60; 25 = 43; 26 = 59; 27 = 2; 28 = 29; 29 = 27; 30 = 5; 31 = 26; 32 = 25; 33 = 4; 34 = 28; 35 = 45; 36 = 1; 37 = 22; 38 = 8; 39 = 75; 40 = 70; 41 = 18; 42 = 37; 43 = 19; 44 = 88; 45 = 71; 46 = 3; 47 = 72; 48 = 73; 49 = 20; 50 = 92; 51 = 24; 52 = 23; 53 = 7; 54 = 21; 55 = 11; 56 = 54; 57 = 83; 58 = 78; 59 = 64; 60 = 82; 61 = 38; 62 = 57; 63 = 35; 64 = 36; 65 = 6; 66 = 58; 67 = 30; 68 = 65; 69 = 31; 70 = 74; 71 = 41; 72 = 10; 73 = 39; 74 = 14; 75 = 40; 76 = 32; 77 = 17; 78 = 15; 79 = 66; 80 = 42; 81 = 67; 82 = 44; 83 = 13; 84 = 9; 85 = 33; 86 = 84; 87 = 34; 88 = 48; 89 = 68; 90 = 89; 91 = 69; 92 = 90; 93 = 93; 94 = 94.
[1] Chapters 1–50 originally appeared as Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales collected by Laura Gonzenbach (Routledge, 2003). Chapters 51-92 originally appeared as The Robber with a Witch’s Head: More Stories from the Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales collected by Laura Gonzenbach (Routledge, 2004).
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[Review length: 1048 words • Review posted on February 23, 2006]