Italian Folktales in America: The Verbal Art of an Immigrant Woman

by Elizabeth Mathias, Richard Raspa

Overview

A collection that greatly enriches our understanding of who told (and tells) märchen (Italian folktales) to whom, why and how they are told, and, perhaps most important, under what conditions.

In 1941, while studying folklore at Wayne University with Professor Emelyn Gardner, Bruna Todesco collected from her mother, Clementina, the twenty-two märchen and legends presented in this book. Bruna, her mother, and her father, John, immigrated to America in 1930 from their native village of Faller in the Veneto region of northern Italy.
Not just made up of the recorded texts, this book is also built on the reminiscences of that storyteller and some of her old neighbors in her birthplace, and is a record by two resourceful fieldworkers of what it takes to study memory culture. The result is a work that greatly enriches our understanding of who told (and tells) märchen to whom, why and how they are told, and, perhaps most important, under what conditions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814321225
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	10/01/1988
Series:	Wayne State University Folklore Archive Study Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Mathias is associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at St. John’s University, Jamaica, NY. She has studied at the University of Akron (BA, 1962), Kent State University (MA, 1964), and the University of Pennsylvania (MA, 1972; Ph.D., 1974). She has published several articles on various aspects of Italian culture.

Richard Raspa has published two books and numerous articles, primarily in the field of folklore. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1971. He is currently associate professor in communications at Wayne State University.

Editorial Reviews

This study is not only an exemplary presentation of folk narrative, but also a sensitive and moving view of the way folklore exists in a real person's life. Mathias and Raspa make Clementina Todesco's narratives available to the rest of us, and, equally and perhaps more important, they help us better understand the nature and character of the immigrant experience in America.

B. A. Botkin Prize Committee

Clementina Todesco, an immigrant from a northern Italian village, is the focus of this study and collection. The texts presented were collected by her daughter in the 1940s. Mathias and Raspa contacted Clementina 30 years later and interviewed her to discuss the cultural context and aesthetic influence for the tales both in Italy and the United States. For folklorists this analysis will be of interest, since it is a rare case study of a folk artist over a long period. The introductory material is extensive and competent but a bit flat, particularly in contrast to the tales themselves, which, though rewritten by their original collector, are indicative of a great verbal artist. On the whole this is an auspicious beginning for a new series. David S. Azzolina, Johns Hopkins Univ. Lib., Baltimore

Library Journal