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”BELLA VENEZIA”-Italo Calvino
A: Context
”Bella Venezia” is an Italian fairy tale. It was collected by Italo Calvino and it is part of Italian Folktales (Fiabe italiane) which is a collection of 200 Italian folktales. Calvino bagan his project in 1954 and in 1956 he published ”Bella Venezia”. He was influenced by Vladimir Propp and his ”Morphology of the Folktales”. While writing the collection, Calvino did not use tales collected from listeners, but he used the work of existing folklorists to a great extent.
It was first translated into English in 1961 by Louis Brigante, then, in 1975 Sylvia Mulcahy offered another translation and in 1980 it was followed by George Martin’s translation.. Italian Folktales constituted the first comprehensive collection of Italian folktales.
B: Summary
Bella Venezia is an innkeeper. She had the habit of asking her customers questions about her beauty. She wanted to know if they had seen a woman who was more beautiful than her. She used to offer a half price for the room to those who said they had not.
But one day a man came to her inn. When asked the same question, he answered that he had seen a more beautiful woman. He was talking about his own daughter. Bella Venezia got angry and doubled the price for the stay. She also gave orders to have the man' daughter locked in a tower. The tower had only a single window. Then she sent a servant to kill her,who instead let her go.
The girl wandered by herself until she saw twelve robbers order a cave open and shut ( "Open up, desert!" and "Close up, desert!"). She went inside the cave, hid there for a while, then cleaned the place and ate some of their food. It took some time for the robbers to find her. They accepted to have her live with them, like ”a little sister”. So, instead of the seven dwarfs (like in Snow White), she ends up living with the twelve robbers. Unfortunately, one day, one of them went to Bella Venezia’s inn and told her about a girl who was more beautiful than her. Bella Venezia angry as she was, sent a witch to deal with the young girl once and for all. The wicked witch put a hairpin into the girl’s head, making her fall to the ground as if dead. She was found by the robbers, they wept, and buried her in a hollow tree. One day a Prince and his dogs were hunting in that area. The dogs found the girl’s body inside the tree. The Prince took her to his castle. His mother persuaded him to at least comb her hair. When he tried to do that, the pin fell out. She awoke, and the Prince married her.
C: Position in the Aarne-Thomson-Uther Index.
Other Tales of the Supernatural , position 709 (Snow White).
Concerning the characters and functions according to Vladimir Propp, the fairy tale could have the following functions:
I. The villain- Bella Venezia
II. The helper- the robbers who come to help the hero
III. The hero- the daughter
D. Similarities with other known tales
There is an obvious similarity between Calvino‘s ”Bella Venezia” and ”Snow White”. The innkeeper, Bella Venezia is actually the bad queen in Snow White, the step mother. They are both obsessed with beauty, asking the same question over and over again. But one day they find out the truth, for a traveller and from the magic mirror. They both send someone to kill the younger girl and that person cannot complete the task out of pity. The young girl wanders by herself until she reaches shelter (the dwarfs’ house, the robbers’ place). She is saved by seven ”people” in both stories. There is a bad witch who wants to finish the initial task (kill her). The witch uses magic objects-the hair pin. The young girl falls into a deep sleep, like being dead. The seven dwarfs/ robbers mourn her for days. There is s handsome prince who saves the girl and eventually marries her.
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