CML Sponsors Film Screening and Speaker

The Department of Classical and Modern Language will host a screening of “Tale of Tales: A Feast for the Imagination,” at 8 p.m. March 8 in Magruder Hall 2001 and a guest lecture by Dr. Marino Forlino at 5 p.m. March 9 in Magruder Hall 2001.

“Tale of Tales” is 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 consists of three gruesome and interconnected vignettes revolving around the darkest aspects of love and the extreme measures taken to find it.

Inspiration for the film came from the 17th century collection of fairy tales by Neapolitan writer Giambattista Basile, entitled, “Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille,” meaning “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.

Forlino, an assistant professor at Scripps College, will discuss the influences of Arabic literature on the Italian fairy tale tradition. He has a degree in foreign languages and literatures from the University of Florence, a graduate diploma in American studies from Smith College and a Ph.D. in Italian from Rutgers University. His expertise in Italian literature between the Medieval and Baroque periods focuses on the history of the Italian fairy tale. Forlino 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.”

Both events are free and open to the public.