Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
Nosocial jargon calls them contentcontent, are all on the hunt for new content to fill our daily void.
There is even a new profession, the “content creator”, which deals with creating attractive content to advertise brands and companies. Give me content and I’ll lift the world, or at least make it spin a little longer…
But it’s no wonder, we have always needed “stories” to feed our imagination and with the advent of artificial intelligence there will certainly be those who are already relying on infallible algorithms to make us tell new “tales” without the need to bring the imagination into play.
That is why the book of Nicholas Jubber The storytellers (Bompiani) so fascinated me. Nicholas Jubber is a journalist, a writer and above all a great traveller, who has explored the world just like some authors whose deeds he narrates in this unusual book in which he tries to reveal the origins of fairy talesthe first stories we heard as children and which continue to fascinate us at any age.
“The Storytellers” by Nicholas Jubber (Bompiani)
Sooner or later, we’ve all asked ourselves: how are fairy tales born? And finally Jubber, through a research as fascinating as an adventurous journey, reveals many secrets to us, taking us from the East to Northern Europe in pursuit of seven authors who have made history in this field. Jubber, retracing their tracks, cthe reveals that even the great masters have often collected, modified and personalized already existing stories, collecting ancient plots and handed down legends orally since the dawn of time.
Let’s rediscover in this beautiful book the genius of our Giambattista Basile which, with his Cunto de li cuntias early as the 1500s he had told stories such as Cinderella And Sleeping Beauty in the woodwhich will then be taken up by many other authors of the genre.
Among many known and less known, a woman stands out for her originality, the French writer Madame de Villeneuve, who in 1700 invented fairy tales for the guests of her living room preferring female heroines who had to deal with handsome and inhuman husbands, if not real beasts: not surprisingly it is to her that we owe the first version of the much-celebrated tale The beauty and the Beast.
We are certain of one thing, that we will never stop being enchanted and attentive when someone begins to tell a story, once upon a time and there will always be.
All articles by Serena Dandini
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