Liz Warren | Storyteller

Jack Zipes wrote the introduction to Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Crane.   Zipes includes a biography of the author and an analysis of Crane’s contribution to the field.  Thomas Crane predates Italio Calvino by almost 100 years and is an American. In the introduction Zipes quotes Crane, who relates the “rise of interest in Italian folktales to the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century”.  This same connection may be found in Germany with the Grimm Brothers.  What an odd juxtaposition!  Even before globalization, an American scholar’s work gave rise to the Italian nationalistic movement.