Straparola, GIOVAN FRANCESCO, was born near the end of the 15th century at Caravaggio, about half-way between Milan and Cremona. In 1550 he published at Venice Tredeci piaccvoli notti, the second part at the same place in 1554. This famous work was a collection of stories in the style of the Decameron, grouped round an imaginary incident. Francesca Gonzaga, daughter of Ottaviano Sforza, Duke of Milan, on account of commotions in that city, retires to the island of Murano, near Venice, where, surrounded by a group of brilliant ladies and gentlemen, she passes the time listening to stories related by the company. Thirteen nights are thus spent, and seventy-four stories told, each followed by an enigma, when the approach of Lent brings an interruption. These stories are derived from the most various sources; twenty-four are borrowed from Jerome Morlini, fifteen from Boccaccio, Sachetti, Brevio, Ser Giovanni, the Fabliaux, the Golden Legend, and the Romance of Merlin. Six are of plain oriental origin, and may be found in the Panchatantra, Forty Viziers, Siddhi Kūṛ, and Thousand and One Nights. Twenty-nine stories remain, and of these twenty-two are genuine folk-tales. Two of Straparola's stories found a wider immortality in Perrault's 'Peau d'Ane' and 'Le Chat Botté'; and many of Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy-tales, as well as others in the Cabinet des Fées, are mere translations. Straparola's book passed through sixteen editions in twenty years; a French translation of the first book by Jean Louveau appeared in 1560, reprinted in 1573, along with the second book as translated by Pierre de Larivey (Les Facétieuses Nuits de Straparole in P. Jannet's 'Bibliothèque Elzevirienne', 2 vols. 1857; new ed. of Jouaust, with preface by Gustave Brunet, 1882). Many of Straparola's stories are faectious in its narrowest sense; but at least they are no worse than their contemporaries. The work was prohibited by the church in 1605; yet another reprint appeared at Venice so soon after as 1608.
See F. W. V. Schmidt's German translation of eighteen tales, with valuable notes (Berlin, 1817); the Dissertation by F. W. J. Brakelmann (Göttingen, 1867); Liebrecht's translation of Dunlop's History of Fiction (1851); and the translation of the Nights by W. G. Waters (2 vols. 1894).