California Italian Studies

This article discusses Calvino’s idea of the fairy tale through the analysis of his theoretical works. On the one hand, such a discussion is crucial for the understanding of Six Memos for the Next Millennium, where the fairy tale is a central concern; on the other hand, it fills a patent gap. Despite Calvino’s thorough knowledge of the main trends in fairy-tale studies of his time, in fact, the leading scholars of this field have rarely discussed his views. I compare fairy tale and fantastic fiction, showing that according to Calvino the fairy tale is strikingly different, on a theoretical level, from the fantastic genre. Whereas the fantastic is conceived as a fully historical narrative typology, the fairy tale is something more than just a literary genre among others. The fairy tale is indeed very close to the most remote source of storytelling, and provides decisive evidence of the combinatory nature of fiction itself. This idea of the fairy tale raised for Calvino important issues about the notion of History itself, and the relationship between historical processes and ideal forms. Calvino tried to address these issues by splitting the fairy tale into two parts, and hypothesizing the existence of what I call a deep fairy tale, which is what this article is mostly about.