Giuseppe Pitrè

Who was Giuseppe Pitrè?

Giuseppe Pitrè, the great Italian folklorist was also a medical doctor, professor, and senator in Sicily. As a folklorist he is credited with extending the realm of folklore to include all the manifestations of popular life. He was also a forerunner in the field of medical history.

Pitrè was born in Palermo. 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 study. He founded the study of "folk psychology", in Sicily, teaching at the University of Palermo.

Between 1871 and 1913, he compiled the Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane, a collection of Sicilian oral culture in twenty-five volumes.

Pitrè's Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani, 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 nineteenth century.