The nights of Straparola, volume 1 [of 2] — Inside the Classic

Frame and Structure

The frame narrative of The Nights is minimal: a proem introduces the company, and each night begins with a brief description of the setting and the appointed storyteller. The tales themselves are self-contained, but the frame provides a social context for their telling. In the excerpts, the frame does not intrude on the fables; instead, it offers a contrast between the polite, leisured atmosphere of Murano and the violent, magical events within the stories. This structure allows Straparola to juxtapose different tones—the fourth fable of Night One, for instance, involves incest, murder, and revenge, while the second fable of the same night is a comic trickster tale. The reader moves from one moral universe to another without transition, a feature that emphasizes the artificiality of the storytelling situation.

Serpentine Transformations

Serpents appear repeatedly in the excerpts, most notably in the fable of Biancabella, where a snake named Samaritana proves to be a transformed sister. The serpent speaks, sheds its skin, and becomes a maiden, reversing the typical fairy-tale trajectory of human-to-animal metamorphosis. This image recurs in other tales: in the third fable of Night Two, a devil takes on human form to marry, and in the fifth fable of Night One, a husband disguises himself to catch his wife. The serpent thus functions as a symbol of hidden identity and sudden reversal. Straparola does not moralize about the serpent's nature; instead, he uses it as a plot device that enables both horror and restoration. The movement from serpent to human is described with clinical precision—Samaritana “threw off from herself the scaly skin”—underscoring the physicality of transformation.

Movement Between Spaces

The fables in this volume frequently shift characters from one setting to another, often through flight, exile, or magical transport. In the Biancabella tale, the heroine moves from a palace to a wood, then to an old man's cottage, and finally to a newly conjured palace in Naples. Each location carries different possibilities: the wood is a place of suffering and revelation, the cottage a site of healing, the palace a stage for recognition and revenge. Similarly, in the first fable of Night Two, a prince born as a pig travels between kingdoms, marrying three wives before shedding his animal form. These movements are rarely leisurely; they are driven by persecution, disobedience, or magical intervention. The geography of the tales—Genoa, Montferrat, Perugia, England, Naples—creates a Mediterranean world where distance enables both danger and deliverance.

Recurring Details and Motifs

Several motifs recur across the fables, binding the collection together. Severed hands appear in the Biancabella excerpt, where the heroine's hands are cut off and later restored by her serpent-sister. Eyes are also removed and healed. These bodily dismemberments echo the violence of other tales: in the fifth fable of Night One, a wife is put to death by her brothers; in the fourth fable of Night Two, a devil cannot endure his wife and possesses a duke. Objects also carry weight: a twig of laurel strikes the earth to raise a palace; a bed and a horse are stolen in a comic fable. The repeated emphasis on physical transformation—pig to man, serpent to woman, blind to sighted—suggests that identity in Straparola's world is unstable, subject to magic, cruelty, or chance. The tales do not explain these transformations; they simply present them as narrative facts.

Readers approaching this first volume of The Nights of Straparola will find a collection that rewards attention to its framing and its recurring imagery. The tales are best read in sequence, as the contrasts between nights create a rhythm of expectation and surprise. Pay particular attention to how each fable uses its setting—whether a court, a forest, or a cottage—to shape the action. The translation by W. G. Waters preserves the directness of Straparola's prose, allowing the strangeness of these early fairy tales to emerge without embellishment.

Reading Straparola’s fables on Murano tonight, I kept thinking of the clever merchants and hidden doors—those quiet moments when a household shifts and a secret takes root. It reminded me, strangely, of Ali Baba, or the Forty Thieves — Reading Companion, where a cave’s mouth opens the same way, both cunning and dark. They feel like cousins separated by time.