Giuseppe Pitrè (22 December 184110 April 1916) was an Italian folklorist, medical doctor, professor, and senator for

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

. As a folklorist he is credited with extending the concept of folklore to include all manifestations of popular life. He is also considered a forerunner in the field of

medical history The medical history, case history, or anamnesis (from Greek: ἀνά, ''aná'', "open", and μνήσις, ''mnesis'', "memory") of a patient is a set of information the physicians collect over medical interviews. It involves the patient, and ev ...

. Pitrè was born in

Palermo Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The ...

. After serving as a volunteer in 1860 under Garibaldi, and graduating in medicine in 1866, he threw himself into the study of literature, and wrote the first scientific studies on Italian popular culture, pioneering Italian ethnographic studies. He founded the study of "folk psychology", in Sicily, teaching at the

University of Palermo The University of Palermo () is a public university, public research university in Palermo, Italy. It was founded in 1806, and is currently organized in 12 Faculties. History The University of Palermo was officially founded in 1806, although it ...

. Between 1871 and 1913, he compiled the ''Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane'' ("Library of Sicilian popular traditions"), a collection of Sicilian oral culture in twenty-five volumes. Pitrè's ''Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani'' ("Sicilian Fairy Tales, Stories, and Folktales"), 1875, documenting Sicily's rich folkloric heritage derived from both European and Middle Eastern traditions, is the culmination of the great European folklore scholarship that began earlier in the 19th century. Against the cultural grain of his times, Pitrè championed the common people of Sicily and their customs, and his scholarship of oral narrative tradition is arguably as significant as that of the

Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm, Wilhelm (1786–1859), were Germans, German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of Oral tradit ...

. In 1880 Pitrè co-founded the folk traditions journal ''Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari'' (English: Archive for the Study of Popular Traditions), which he edited until 1906, and in 1894 he published a basic bibliography of Italian popular traditions. He was made an honorary member of the American Folklore Society in 1890. Palermo's '' Museo Antropologico Etnografico Siciliano'' was founded in his memory.

Notes

References

Brief biography
* Amedeo Benedetti, ''“Io vivo nel popolo e del popolo” : Contributo alla vita di Giuseppe Pitrè'', “Esperienze Letterarie”, a. XXXVII (2012), n. 1, gennaio-marzo, pp. 59–84. * Zipes, Jack. :The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè." ''Folklore'', volume 120, no. 1 (April 2009): 1-18.

External links

* * * Martinengo-Cesaresco, Evelyn. " Giuseppe Pitrè (Obituary)" ''Folk-Lore''. Volume 27, 1916. pp. 314–316. Italian ethnologists 1841 births 1916 deaths Politicians from Palermo Italian folklorists Folklorists of Sicilian folklore Academic staff of the University of Palermo Burials at San Domenico, Palermo Physicians from Sicily Collectors of fairy tales {{ethnologist-stub