Tale of Tales: A Feast for the Imagination

The  Department of Classical and Modern Languages is pleased to announce Tale of Tales: A Feast for the Imagination, a film screening and guest lecture by Dr. Marino Forlino (Scripps College) on the influences of Arabic literature on the Italian literary tradition.  Both events are free and open to the public; all are encouraged to attend both or either of the events. On Wednesday evening, March 8, at 8:00 pm in Magruder 2001, there will be a free screening of Tale of Tales (2015), a highly acclaimed English-language feature film by Italian director Matteo Garrone, starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, and John C. Reilly. The film, which consists of three gruesome and interconnected vignettes revolving around the darkest aspects of love and the extreme measures taken to find it, was inspired by the 17th-century collection of fairytales by Neapolitan writer Giambattista Basile entitled Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for the Little Ones). Basile’s tales were an influential source for many well-known writers, including Charles Perrault, the Grimm brothers, and Hans Christian Andersen. On Thursday evening, March 9, at 5:00 pm in Magruder 2001, Professor Marino Forlino (Scripps College) will discuss the exotic, erotic, and esoteric influences of Arabic literature on the Italian fairy tale tradition.  Dr. Forlino is an Assistant Professor of Italian at Scripps College. He has a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures (English and German) from the University of Florence, a graduate diploma in American Studies from Smith College, and a Ph.D. in Italian from Rutgers University. His area of expertise is Italian literature between the Medieval and Baroque periods, with a particular focus on the history of the Italian fairy tale. He is currently completing a manuscript on the influence of the Arabic prose tradition on Italian literature, in which he examines a series of shared motifs, such as esotericism, eroticism, and exoticism, between Boccaccio’s Decameron and Basile’s Pentamerone and the heritage of A Thousand and One Nights.