The Piacevoli notti of Giovan Francesco Straparola, an obscure Italian writer whose descent may be traced in Caravaggio (a village nowadays in the district of Bergamo), has been rightly regarded as the European capostipite principale dei repertori fiabeschi. (1) In other words, it was considered kind of incunabulum of the fairy tale where several texts, which would later enjoy wider success with the most renowned and widespread collections of fairy tales, found for the first time their place within literary genre. After quick examination of the 73 novelle or according to the definition given by the author himself, one may immediately notice the multifarious form of the book. It includes unmistakable tales of magic, novelle in the manner of the Decameron, exempla, fables, twenty-three translations from the Latin Novellae of Girolamo Morlini, (2) and two vernacular novelle (in the bergamasco and in the pavano). Finally, all nights are opened by lines of verse: madrigali, canzoni, stanzas; and each tale is closed by an erotic enigma. (3) Giving thorough account of such variety of disparate texts inserted in framework clearly--and unnaturally--inspired by the cornice of the Decameron, would need complex and articulate discourse which is beyond the aims of the present article. However it seems necessary to note that the wide narrative scope characterising the Piacevoli notti is both distinctive mark della galassia di tipologie e forme narrative che connota la narrativa dopo Boccaccio and, most of all, disagio del narrare novelle regolari (in senso boccacciano) (4) in the years around 1550, although one has to concede that the novella was originally genre with no rule. If, on the one hand, those years witness the highest peak of the popularity of the Decameron, printed in editions often provided with paratextual notes meant to make the reading of the whole work (or of selected novelle) easier to carry out, on the other hand, the book market seems also orientated to foster new literary products, around or all'ombra del grande Libro. (5) The Piacevoli notti indeed represented new and peculiar book, both for the wide spectrum of its narrative forms and eminently for the choice of treating the folk story as literary genre. The folk story of fairies was thenceforth an enjoyable widespread night entertainment, as witnessed by an interesting letter of Andrea Calmo written and addressed a la signora Frondosa almost in the same years in which the Piacevoli notti was published. ... e torna tutti sentar digando le pi stupende panzane, stampie e imaginative, del mondo, de comare oca, de fraibolan, de osel bel verde, de statua de legno, del bossolo da le fade, d'i porceleti, de l'aseno che andete remito, del sorze che andete in pelegrinazo, del lovo che se fese miedego, e tante fanfalughe, che no besogna dir. Quei che ha pi sal in zuca recita la historia de Otinelo e Giulia, e quella de Maria per Ravena, el contrasto de la Quaresema e de Carneval, Guiscardo e Ghismonda, de Piramo e Tisbe, l'e fatto el beco l'oca, e de ponze el mato cugna. (6) The testing of new literary forms to please book market yearning for novelties may explain Straparola's use of the long-standing fairy tale repertoire, producing work strongly representative of an epifania del genere, (7) after the fleeting presence of fairy tale motifs in earlier narrative collections (Boccaccio himself was partly influenced by them). (8) As I tried to show in another contribution, (9) Straparola and his printer, Orfeo Dalla Carta (possibly related to the Danza family), investigated the market through the publication of the first book of the Piacevoli notti in January, 1550. (10) The originality of the work and, in particular, the use of the fairy tale within the boundaries of the novella genre, but necessarily in the domain of traditional, almost artificial structure, represented challenge never taken before nor codified: the publication of the first book was therefore nothing but an action aimed at the book market. …