author

Pompeo Sarnelli

Hermann W. Haller (Translator)

Description

The Posilecheata is a small jewel with an optimistic vision of humanity created by the young polygraph Pompeo Sarnelli, alias Masillo Reppone de Gnanopoli. Together with Basile’s masterpiece, which was its source of inspiration, it stands out as one of the very few narrative prose texts in Italy’s literary dialect canon. The five fairy tales exude the author’s imagination and fantasy, passion for the Neapolitan language and culture, erudite knowledge of history and art, and daily exposure to all facets of humanity. They were published in 1684 during what has been called the Golden Age of Naples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the capital of the Kingdom governed by Spanish viceroys underwent a demographic explosion, becoming one of the largest cities of early Modern Europe.

Born in Polignano a Mare and drawn as an adolescent to Naples, Italy’s early modern cultural capital, the Apulian polygraph Pompeo Sarnelli (1649-1724) was a linguist and philologist with historical and artistic interests, a translator and editor, a writer with literary ambitions, and an author with the French printer Antonio Bulifon of guidebooks to Naples and its surrounding tourist destinations. With his fairytales the young multilingual priest and future Bishop of Bisceglie celebrates the Neapolitan language and Partenope’s rich cultural history.

ISBN 978-1-946328-66-3