Our Idea

InFabula’s origins are directly rooted in Fiabe Italiane di Italo Calvino, an anthology of tradition Italian fables written and translated in a simpler form by Italo Calvino in 1956. This collection aims to regroup centuries of oral and written stories into an organized and contemporary structure, dividing them by region and enriching them with critical notes and annotation of linguistic and cultural content.

Calvino rewrote the fables basing its work on their original source, such as the Le piacevoli notti by Francesco Straparola (Venice, 1550) and Lo Cunto de li Cunti by Giambattista Basile (Naples, 1636); other fables have been provided to Calvino trough the transcription of regional oral stories, then redacted by the author in a national language accessible to everyone. To this day, Calvino’s work is unmatched: Fiabe Italiane represents the only Italian literary instance containing examples of folklore coming from the entire peninsula. The effect created by this co-existence is unique: while reading, it’s possible to identify patterns between regional traditions and stories of European matrix, but it’s also possible to follow a sort of trace among the Italian fables themselves.

Our team wanted to design a model capable of navigating trough this enormous variety of characters, situations, rites and patterns. It’s not a ground-breaking concept, since it’s possible to find similar projects online: what distinguishes InFabula from other examples, in our opinion, is how we decided to explore this sea of possibilities. Roles and archetypes play a key point in our project, since they’re our compass, so to say: every character in Fiabe Italiane has been coded to be distinguishable by their name, the role they play in the story, and by their archetype, and because of this, each one of them is connected to other individuals sharing their same attributes. To better explain, every Princess with the role “protagonist” and the archetype “lover” is linked to another one of the same type, and every “helper” interacting with them is therefore compared according to their nature and actions: for example, we could ask ourselves, who is the perfect helper (and with this we mean, the most common) in an Italian fable? And what does this say about our culture and our remotest mindset?