biography
| name: |
Basile, Giambattista
|
pronunciation:
[baseelay]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (c.1575–1632)
|
| biography:
| Poet and short-story writer, born in Naples, Campania, SW Italy. At first a soldier in the Venetian Republic's service, he then spent some time at the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Back in Naples, he became a writer and publisher, his authors including Bembo and Giovanni della Casa. He wrote Italian poems in the Marinistic style, but his best work is in Neapolitan dialect: nine eclogues, Le Muse Napolitane and a collection of 50 short stories, Lo cunto de' li cunti (1634–6), told in five days (hence the later name of Pentamerone) by 10 old women in a style rich in metaphors. |
|
|
