Thanks to The Enchanted Boot, English-speaking readers can now experience the Italian fairy tale’s unique role in shaping Europe’s literature of magic and wonder. Superb translations and expert commentary make Nancy Canepa’s collection of Italian tales from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century a monumental contribution to fairy-tale studies.
~Donald Haase
....praise for the author’s vast knowledge of Italian literature and the fairy-tale tradition within it, and her excellent choice of representative texts. Every reader will discover some new fairy treasure here.
~Joseph Russo
Nancy Canepa has superbly translated and edited a complete collection of the most significant Italian tales from Roman times to the present. Her translations and choice of tales reveal the enchantment of Italian storytellers who deserve to be better known in the English-speaking world.
~Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota
Nancy Canepa's splendid selection of Italian fairy tales is a precious gift to all readers interested in this literary genre. Not only does this volume reveal the persistent beauty of the Italian tradition, it also offers a rigorous analysis of its historical and cultural evolution.
~Armando Maggi, Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor of Western Civilization, University of Chicago
What a timely and marvelous volume this is! The Enchanted Boot traces a much-needed trajectory for the Italian fairy-tale tradition, mapping a long and distinctive history for this unruly genre that highlights how intertwined its fantastic flights and ironies are with harsh social realities as well as with the Italian peoples' often conflicting regional and national sensibilities. Canepa's breadth and insight as a scholar of literary fairy tales and Italian culture is matched by her genuine talent as a translator keenly tuned into the brio, moods, and multiple registers of the genre in Italy from the fourteenth century to the present. Finally, a collection in English that allows for Italian fairy tales to take their rightful place in the transnational history of the genre rather than playing cameo roles in it, and it is such a pleasure to read.
~Cristina Bacchilega, Professor Emerita, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and Coeditor of Marvels & Tales: a Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies
Canepa's volume The Enchanted Boot: Italian Fairy Tales & Their Tellers is a welcome addition to the field of fairy- tale studies and to anglophone readers of fairy tales and Italian literature more generally. The book gives access to a wide variety of Italian tales, some of them translated here for the first time, spanning several centuries, regions, and styles. It should grace the bookshelves of scholars, teachers, students, and readers of the Italian fairy-tale tradition.
~Cristina Mazzoni
