SOURCE: "Mérimée's Federigo: From Folktale to Short Story," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter, 1982, pp. 57-63.

In the following essay, Crecelius details Mérimée's transformation of a common folktale into the tightly-structured short story Federigo.

"Ce conte est populaire dans le royaume de Naples . . . [I]l paraît avoir été composé vers la fin du Moyen Age."¹ With the addition of this short note regarding the origin of the tale, Mérimée dodges complete responsibility for the composition of his Federigo, which appeared in the Revue de Paris in 1829. He reiterated his position many years later, when Champfleury suggested in his Historie de l' imagerie populaire that Federigo was none other than a version of the popular story of "Bonhomme Misère."² In a letter to Champfleury, Mérimée wrote: "Je ne connais pas l'histoire du bonhomme Misère. Celle de...