Gianfrancesco Straparola

Gianfrancesco Straparola (born c. 1480, Caravaggio, duchy of Milan [Italy]—died after 1557) was an Italian author of one of the earliest and most important collections of traditional tales.

Straparola’s Piacevoli notti (1550–53; The Nights of Straparola) contains 75 novellas (short prose tales) that were later used as source material by William Shakespeare, Molière, and others. It drew from folk tradition and introduced into European literature some 20 fairy tales, among them what would eventually be known as “Beauty and the Beast” and “Puss in Boots.” Straparola’s tales were drawn from many sources, and today some of his versions appear far removed from their present-day forms. Using a technique borrowed from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, Straparola set his stories within a frame. Each one is told on a successive night by a party of men and women relaxing at Murano, a suburb of Venice. His collection soon became famous throughout Europe. Little is known of Straparola’s personal life.