University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Department of Near Eastern Languages and Departmental Papers (NELC) Civilizations (NELC) 2010 Straparola: The Revolution That Was Not Dan Ben-Amos University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers Part of the Cultural History Commons, European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Folklore Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, and the Oral History Commons Recommended Citation Ben-Amos, D. (2010). Straparola: The Revolution That Was Not. The Journal of American Folklore, 123 (490), 426-446. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.123.490.0426 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/90 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Straparola: The Revolution That Was Not Abstract Inspired by Ruth Bottigheimer's 2002 book, Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition, this article examines her proposition that the sixteenth-century Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola invented the "rise tale," in which a lowly hero or heroine climbs the socioeconomic ladder with the help of a magical benefactor. It investigates Bottigheimer's evidence for this claim as well as her argument that Straparola's literary invention was a projection of the emerging Italian middles class in the sixteenth century. Contrary to Bottigheimer's proposition, it is found that tales with similar form were told in classical Greece and in