Pinocchio and Children's Literature
onsidered to be a book for children: a common enough genre today, but a relatively new one in Collodi's time. Children's literature was an innovation in nineteenth-century Italy (and elsewhere). In fact, in Italian culture a strict division between adult and children's literature was for centuries quite an alien idea. Oral folk traditions and a strong classical education were very much a part of shared experience (the latter at least by those upper-class Italians privileged enough to have a formal education), and both young and adult Italians shared narratives that drew heavily on these sources.  | | European romanticism and children's literature | | | The emergence of the category of children's literature in the nineteenth century is not confined to Italy, of course. European romanticism brought together an interest in children with a passion for popular literary forms and for mythic themes and structures.[more] | | | The almost universal Catholicism of Italians also acquainted children with the Biblical events and figures that inform Italian lay literature. And because of the strength of the oral tradition, Italians were accustomed to the pleasures of a simple "good story" and unashamed of their enthusiasm for engaging and humorous tales, even if fairly simplistic ones. It was not until the nineteenth century, as nation building came to the fore and the formation of Italian citizens with shared values became a burning issue, that books written primarily or exclusively for children proliferated, acknowledging differences between the two readerships. case in point. It relies heavily on the Tuscan novella or short-story tradition to which Boccaccio's Decameron belongs, and also on classical sources, such as Homer and Dante. As the critic Glauco Cambon wrote: "Storytelling is a folk art in the Tuscan countryside, and has been for centuries.... Pinocchio's relentless variety of narrative incident, its alertness to social types, its tongue-in-cheek wisdom are of a piece with that illustrious tradition" (p. 53). Further, Cambon highlights as well the importance of the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and the Divine Comedy to the structure and style of Pinocchio and concludes: "In a place like Italy, the cultural background would insure a deep response to this aspect of Collodi's myth, and guarantee its authenticity" (pp. 57-58). From its initial publication to today, the puppet's tale has been read and enjoyed by audiences of children and adults, both of which find different pleasures in it.  | | Sergio Strizzi | | Roberto Benigni in his self-directed Pinocchio. | The contemporary Italian actor and director Roberto Benigni, whose humoremerges in great part out of the Tuscan tradition of the novella,especially out of the beffa, or trickster story, as well as out ofa very personal sort of bricolage of popular and high cultural references,has recently filmed his version of Pinocchio, starring himself asthe puppet; he had already been involved in the 1970s in a production ofPinocchio with filmmaker and playwright Giuseppe Bertolucci, thebrother of the more famous Bernardo, so his interest is quite long-standing.Benigni has commented (quoted online) that he is seeking to bring to thefore the Biblical elements of the tale ("a little child shall lead them"),and, given his great love for and knowledge of Dante, I would not be surprisedif Dantesque qualities will also be highlighted, as they were, along witha myriad of other "high" cultural referents, in Life is Beautifuland others of his films. I repeat that Pinocchio was in the past,as today, a tale that was immediately appreciated by adults as well as bychildren. This appeal to mature readers is evident currently in the waysin which filmmakers and "serious" writers continue to respond to it, eitherin indirect appropriations of some of its elements or in wholesale reworkingsof the puppet's story, as I shall discuss further on in some detail. |
|
