Giuseppe Pitrè
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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He 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 ("Library of Sicilian popular traditions"), a collection of Sicialian oral culture in twenty-five volumes.
In 1882 he founded the "Archives for the Study of the Popular Traditions, and in 1894 he published a basic bibliography of the Italian popular traditions. Palermo's Museo Antropologico Etnografico Siciliano was founded in his memory.