The Adventures of Pinocchio

Pinocchio, The Adventures of (Le avventure di Pinocchio). Carlo Collodi first published his vivacious masterpiece as a serial story in a children's weekly paper, Il Giornale per i bambini, between 1881 and 1883. In February 1883 it was issued as a volume with black‐and‐white illustrations by Enrico Mazzanti, who had collaborated with Collodi in earlier work. The serial was originally entitled La storia di un burattino (The Story of a Puppet) and ended tragically with chapter 15; the definitive title was adopted on the relaunching of the serial, the whole eventually reaching 36 short chapters. Pinocchio is a fairy story not only because the ‘Fairy with indigo hair’ is prominent as a kind of fairy godmother to the puppet who longs to become a real boy; in addition, many of the other characters and some narrative devices link it to the age‐old web of oral and literary storytelling concerning the marvellous, and not just to those strands identified with the complex art of the fairy tale. Among the fairy‐tale features of Collodi's fantasy of picaresque adventure are the many talking animals and birds which mix with human beings, the monstrous creatures and ogre‐like humans, the transformations and illogical happenings, the showing of bravery in the face of repeated dangers, and the coming of good from evil. Specifically, the rewarding of virtue is part of a rags‐to‐comfort‐if‐not‐riches theme which evolves from within the social ambit of the very poor. Six years before writing Pinocchio, Collodi had translated Charles Perrault's French fairy tales into Italian, but his wide reading made his children's story into a palimpsest of cultural allusions. If the Fairy encourages and protects and sometimes surprises with magic, as the fairy godmother does in ‘Cinderella’ (to which there are several references), then Collodi's Fox and Cat belong to the Aesopic tradition of fables with morals, as filtered through the verse versions of Perrault's contemporary and compatriot, La Fontaine. Though Ovid is not absent from Pinocchio, the specific metamorphosis of the puppet into a donkey more closely mirrors the circumstances and moral purpose of Apuleius' The Golden Ass. Collodi's inspiration, while not religious, was deeply moral; good and evil are ever‐present, sometimes accompanied by Dantesque imagery. His sense of fun was regarded as emulating the ‘English humour’ of Lewis Carroll and the Nonsense school. The whole story is imbued with the theatrical, whether it be dramatic use of light and dark or overt reference to the Commedia dell'arte. With its apparently direct and natural manner, Pinocchio is a highly sophisticated tale rendered sparkling by the wordplay and renowned irony. As in Carroll, the allusions are not all literary; Collodi was prompted by his commitment to political and social reform. The episodes of the doctors called to diagnose Pinocchio's condition and of the judge pronouncing on the theft of his coins are akin to the fairy tale and the fable (and Alice in Wonderland) in the use of talking animals and in the danger threatening the protagonist, but at a deeper level these episodes pungently criticize professional malpractice and the shortcomings of society. Paradoxically, Pinocchio has the timelessness and universality of the fairy tale and yet was pertinent to matters of moment in Collodi's place and time.

Collodi died before producing any strict sequel to Pinocchio, but the book's best‐seller status in Italy ensured that new editions were constantly available, with illustrations by numbers of different artists; between 1883 and 1983 in Italy alone there were 135 different illustrated editions, well over one per year. From early days, there were many emulators and imitators, a distinguished disciple being Collodi's nephew. Sons, brothers, friends galore of the puppet were spawned, as was even a fiancée. Pinocchio was subjected to an inexhaustible sequence of adventures in many named lands, as an explorer, hunter, policeman, mountaineer, magistrate, journalist, diver, spaceman, dancer, soldier, castaway, and in 1927–8 as a Fascist. These exploitative imitations missed the point, namely the universality and comprehensiveness of the puppet's experience. He was a wooden Everyman.

The original Pinocchio quickly began to be translated around the world in innumerable editions and adaptations. At any one time there are many English versions available, the majority abridgements. Some are even modifications of the first English translation of 1892 by Mary A. Murray, as the 1996 North American version by Ed Young is. More than 100 years on, Pinocchio also appears in many non‐literary guises: toys, trinkets, publicity, and numerous films. Interesting and faithful film versions are still being made, but the one that dominates world‐wide perceptions of Pinocchio, even after 50 years, is Walt Disney's 1940 animated interpretation. While countless children have loved it for itself, it bears little resemblance to Collodi's Pinocchio; the story is fundamentally altered, the mood softened and Hollywoodized, and the puppet deprived of his personality. Disney is sentimental where Collodi is uncompromising, challenging, and exhilarating. Whether or not prompted by cinematic or illustrators' images, readers and critics of different times and places have understood Pinocchio in a myriad different ways, according to the political, religious, or cultural imperatives informing their perception. Interpretations have been variously Christian, marxist, anti‐communist, Freudian, and the product of many other ‘isms’. This capacity to mean many things to many people, to provide metaphors for the frightening and the incomprehensible, but always with a bearing upon the real world, makes Pinocchio an authentic scion of the fairy‐tale tradition.

Bibliography

• Citati, Pietro, “‘Una fiaba esoterica’” and “‘La fata dai capelli turchini’”, in Il velo nero (1979).
• Collodi, Carlo, The Adventures of Pinocchio, trans. and ed. Ann Lawson Lucas (1996).
• Goldthwaite, John, The Natural History of Make‐Believe (1996).
• Perella, Nicolas J., “‘An Essay on Pinocchio’”, in Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio—The Adventures of Pinocchio (1986).
• Wunderlich, R., and Morrissey, T. J., “‘Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio: A Classic Book of Choices’”, in Perry Nodelman, Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature, i (1985).

— Ann Lawson Lucas