Valencian Folktales, Volume 2

Paul Scott Derrick is a Senior Lecturer (retired) in American Literature at the Universitat de Valencia. He has published three collections of essays in English and has co-authored a number of bilingual (English-Spanish) critical editions of works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Henry Adams and Sarah Orne Jewett. He is co-editor of Modernism Revisited: Transgressing Boundaries and Strategies of Renewal in American Poetry (2007) and is also one of the co-editors of The Companion to Richard Berengarten (2016) and Managing The Manager: Critical Essays on Richard Berengarten’s Book-length Poem (2019).With Miguel Teruel, he has translated Berengarten’s Black Light into Spanish (2012) and, with Viorica Patea, has translated eight books by Romanian poet Ana Blandiana into English (My Native Land A4, 2014; The Sun of Hereafter & Ebb of the Senses, 2017; Five Books, 2021). A further volume of Blandiana’s poetry is slated for publication in 2024. His critical essays, translations and poems have appeared in many print and electronic journals in both Europe and the US.Maria-Lluïsa Gea-Valor is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the Universitat de Valencia. Her research interests lie in the fields of genre analysis, written academic discourse and literary translation. She has specialized in evaluative and promotional genres such as the blurb and the book review. Her work has been published in prestigious journals in her field such as Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Journal of English for Specific Purposes, and Ibérica, as well as in the volumes Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings (2009), Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Discourse (2010) and Dialogicity in Written Specialised Genres (2014), among others. She has co-edited several books on applied linguistics, corpus linguistics and translation, and has recently co-authored the book A Practical Introduction to English Phonology (2012).

• 1 IntroductionMaria-Lluïsa Gea-Valor2 Don Joan of Bathkit o’Bwed3 The Prince Who Lost His Memory4 The Giant of the Rosemary Bush5 The Demon that Smoked6 The Castle of Return and No Return7 The Blacksmith of Bèlgida8 The Boy Who Was Born Feet First9 Three Lawsuits at Pentecost10 The Festival Chicken11 Beginneta, Seconetta and Finisetta

This second volume of Enric Valor’s Valencian Folktales fully matches the first in psychological subtlety, mastery of narrative twist, impish humour, resonant passion, and nuanced human warmth. While their particular Valencian flavours are deliciously evident, their themes, arising out of oral tradition, resonate with a universal, archetypal authenticity.Richard Berengarten, English poet and Bye-Fellow, Downing College, CambridgeThis translation of Valor’s folktales, depicting landscapes and ways of life through a language rich in expressivity, internationalizes Valencia’s cultural patrimony. To make the Valorian folktales available in English is to recognize his work as a part of the European ethnopoetic tradition.Verònica Cantó, President, Acadèmia Valenciana de la LlenguaThere is nothing more powerful than a good story. Through the brilliant translation by Paul Scott Derrick and Maria-Lluïsa Gea-Valor, this book encompasses a trove of powerful folktales that open up a literary universe full of dream-like notes and practical teachings that lend voice to a culture’s will to persevere.Vicent Martines, Professor of Medieval Catalan Literature and Romance Relations, and Translation Studies. ISIC-IVITRA, Universitatd'Alacant