author
Giuseppe Pitrè
1841–1916
A doctor by training and a folklorist by passion, he helped preserve the voices, stories, and everyday customs of Sicily. His vast collections of tales, songs, sayings, and beliefs made him one of the key figures in the study of Italian folk culture.
3 Audiobooks
La vita in Palermo cento e più anni fa, Volume 1
by Giuseppe Pitrè
Avvenimenti faceti: Raccolti da un Anonimo Siciliano del secolo XVIII
by Giuseppe Pitrè
La vita in Palermo cento e più anni fa, Volume 2
by Giuseppe Pitrè
About the author
Born in Palermo in 1841, Giuseppe Pitrè trained as a physician but became best known for his lifelong work collecting Sicilian oral traditions. While practicing medicine, he gathered stories, songs, proverbs, customs, and popular beliefs from ordinary people, treating this material as a serious record of lived culture rather than as curiosities.
Between the 1870s and early 1900s, he published major collections including the multi-volume Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane, a landmark effort that preserved a huge body of Sicilian folklore. He is often credited with broadening the idea of folklore to include many parts of everyday life, and his work remains important to readers interested in fairy tales, ethnography, and regional history.
Pitrè was also active in public and academic life, serving as a professor and later as a senator. He died in Palermo in 1916, leaving behind a body of work that still shapes how Sicilian culture and storytelling are understood.