Reading notes: Italian Popular Tales, Part A
This week, I am reading the Italian Popular Tales unit. The first story I read, Zelinda and the Monster, reminded me a lot of Beauty and the Beast — I just watched the live action movie version not too long ago, so I was imagining some of the scenes in the story as what they looked like in the movie.
There's also some overlap between this story and the Princess and the Frog one I read last week — I wonder what it is with the trope that witches turn handsome men into frogs or beasts until a beautiful woman agrees to marry them. It might be a fun retelling to write from the witch's perspective: why does she keep doing this, and what does she gain from it? Did these men wrong her or reject her in some way? I think I could have fun writing a diary entry from the witch who turned Zelinda's husband-to-be into a monster.
I loved the Italian version of Rapunzel, Angiola — I thought the ending where the little dog helped Angiola get her face returned to normal after the witch cursed her was sweet. Dogs are such loyal creatures, I thought it was great that the dog who'd followed Angiola around was able to solve her problem in the end. Maybe retelling the part of the story where the dog goes to beg the witch to turn Angiola's face back to normal would be a fun way to do that story from the dog's perspective.
The story about the Devil Who Married Three Sisters was altogether hilarious and kind of terrible — who in the world just pushes their wife into hell, and then does it again? The devil, I guess. The end line was really funny to me, after the devil saw all of his three wives together: "Since that time he has lost his taste for marrying."
Story source: Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1885).
There's also some overlap between this story and the Princess and the Frog one I read last week — I wonder what it is with the trope that witches turn handsome men into frogs or beasts until a beautiful woman agrees to marry them. It might be a fun retelling to write from the witch's perspective: why does she keep doing this, and what does she gain from it? Did these men wrong her or reject her in some way? I think I could have fun writing a diary entry from the witch who turned Zelinda's husband-to-be into a monster.
I loved the Italian version of Rapunzel, Angiola — I thought the ending where the little dog helped Angiola get her face returned to normal after the witch cursed her was sweet. Dogs are such loyal creatures, I thought it was great that the dog who'd followed Angiola around was able to solve her problem in the end. Maybe retelling the part of the story where the dog goes to beg the witch to turn Angiola's face back to normal would be a fun way to do that story from the dog's perspective.
The story about the Devil Who Married Three Sisters was altogether hilarious and kind of terrible — who in the world just pushes their wife into hell, and then does it again? The devil, I guess. The end line was really funny to me, after the devil saw all of his three wives together: "Since that time he has lost his taste for marrying."
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| A castle fit for a princess, like Zelinda or Angiola. Web source: Pixabay |
Story source: Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1885).
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