The Adventures of Pinocchio

by Carlo Collodi

THE LITERARY WORK

A novel set during an unspecified time in a small Italian village and various fantastic realms; published serially to Italian, first as La storia di un burattino in 1881 then as Le avventure di Pinocchio In 1882–1683; in English, in 1892.

SYNOPSIS

A willful, disobedient puppet comes to life, rum away from home, and has a series of adventures, but ultimately decides to mend his ways in hopes of becoming a human boy.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The Novel in Focus

For More Information

Carlo Collodi was born Carlo Lorenzini in Florence, Italy, in 1826. Both of his parents were servants, his father a cook for the Ginori—an aristocratic Florentine family—and his mother a seamstress. Young Carlo received his elementary schooling in his mother’s country village; he showed such intellectual promise, however, that the nobleman of the house, Marchese Ginori, sent him to a Tuscan seminary in Colle Val d’Elsa for five years. Having no vocation for the church, Collodi completed his education with some priests in Tuscany, then found employment as a journalist and a civil servant. He meanwhile became involved in Italy’s national unification movement and fought with the Tuscan army in the 1848 war of independence from Austria. With his brother and two friends, Carlo founded and contributed to a short-lived satirical newspaper, II lampione (The Lamppost), then became editor for a new theatrical journal (La scaramuccia). At age 30 he adopted the pseudonym Carlo Collodi, joining his given name to that of his mother’s native village. Collodi’s vast literary output included newspaper articles, plays, novels, memoirs, and—most famously—children’s books. His first children’s book, Giannettino (1877; Little Johnny) was a reworking of an earlier educational bestseller called Giannetto (by Luigi Alessandro Parravicini) about a boy’s journey around Italy. Adding innovative touches, Collodi introduced a more natural writing style and realistic characterization of Giannettino, making him a naughty, lively boy rather than a prim paragon. In 1881 Collodi began the tale of Pinocchio for which he is best known today. Published serially from 1881 to 1883, the saga of a disobedient puppet that longs to become a real boy enchanted readers and succeeded on a didactic level too. From the late-nineteenth-century vantage point, the story offers stern but sound guidance on children’s moral and intellectual education as well as a more subtle message to an Italy still in its infancy.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The Unification of Italy

Throughout much of Collodi’s life, Italy struggled to achieve national unity and independence. French forces commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte had invaded Italy back in 1796, bringing the peninsula under French control until 1814. Before and after the French interlude, parts of Italy were dominated by Spain or Austria, powers that held the reins until the Unification of 1860.

Although the first war of independence (1848–49) had ended in failure and Italy remained under Austria’s control, Italians continued to hope for unification, looking to Sardinia (later known as Piedmont-Sardinia) for guidance. Its king, Victor Emmanuel II (Vittorio Emanuele II), appointed Count Camillo di Cavour to the post of premier in 1852. Shrewd and capable, Cavour implemented policies that led to fiscal and military reforms, an alliance with France against Austria, and the acquisition of several important territories by Piedmont-Sardinia. In 1859 it engaged in a second war of independence against Austria, emerging victorious after a bloody battle at Magenta in northern Italy. The negotiated Peace of Villafranca proved less advantageous than Cavour had hoped; nonetheless, Sardinia acquired Lombardy, and the war itself inspired successful revolts in Tuscany, Massa Carrara, Parma, Modena, and Romagna, all of which wanted to unite with Piedmont-Sardinia.

Equally dramatic developments were taking place in southern Italy. In 1860 the charismati Giuseppe Garibaldi amassed over 1,000 re shirted volunteers and launched a successful military campaign against the Bourbons ruling the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The island of Sicily was liberated in May, after Garibaldi won a decisive victory at Calatafimi. Joined by still more volunteers, he crossed the Straits of Messina and proceeded to Naples, where he deposed the Bourbon monarchy and established a kingdom in the name of Victor Emmanuel II. Meanwhile, Victor Emmanuel had affiliated himself with the Piedmontese army, which met up with Garibaldi’s forces just south of Rome. Tension as well as friendly banter ensued until Garibaldi dramatically turned over Naples and Sicily to the king.

Although Rome and Venice were yet to be acquired, a national parliament proclaimed the kingdom of Italy on March 17, 1861; Victor Em-manuel II was recognized as king, and a new constitution (the Albertine statute) was introduced. The new-formed kingdom faced a barrage of problems, especially after the sudden death of its premier, Cavour, in June 1861. Tensions existed between the prosperous industrialized North and the poorer, agricultural South, with differences in laws and traditions exacerbating those tensions. Many wondered how such chasms could ever be bridged. The formation of a national character became as tantamount an issue as the establishment of a nation. A statement made by Piedmontese novelist Massimo d’Azeglio at Unification took on heightened significance: “We have made Italy; now we must make Italians” (d’Azeglio in Killinger, p. 119). Collodi, who had volunteered for military service in both wars of independence, soon found himself involved in this struggle as well. In 1860 he had written a pamphlet in support of unification; his work for the cause continued through the somewhat unlikely means of children’s literature. At once instructive and imaginative, stories like Pinocchio were to exert a powerful influence upon Italians.

Education in nineteenth-century Italy

As the country struggled with severe economic and social problems, liberals and moderates looked increasingly to schools as a remedy. The process of educating Italians posed difficulties, however. At mid-century, at least two-thirds of the populace still could not read or write; in parts of the rural South, the illiteracy rate approached 100 percent (Duggan, p. 154).

The Casati Law of 1859, which was extended to all of Italy in 1861, attempted to address the problem by requiring local authorities to provide elementary schools and teachers. In the two decades after Unification, the number of primary schools doubled. However, an estimated 40 to 50 percent of children never attended, partly because of the lack of financial, human, and material resources, especially in the South. Many of these schools consisted of little more than a single room, often too small for all the students who did come. Teachers themselves were poorly paid and there were few qualified applicants for teaching positions in rural areas. More often than not, local authorities turned to parish priests to serve as teachers.

To complicate the situation further, some middle-class Italians expressed reservations about popular schooling. Conservatives feared that education would transform peasants into revolutionaries. In any case, members of nearly all factions felt that when it was provided, education should encourage Italians to become good, loyal, productive citizens. This last aim took precedence over all others. A statement made by the education minister in 1886 argued that Italians should be “as far as is possible instructed, but above all, they should be honest and hardworking, an asset to their families, and devoted to their king and their country” (Duggan, p. 154). In accordance with that goal, popular education emphasized national loyalty and the work ethic. Indeed, these two values were increasingly touted in reading material for children, both instructional and recreational. Children’s writers did not hesitate to portray dire consequences for lazy, disobedient youngsters. Some years later, the Italian physician Maria Montessori (1870–1952) would argue that children learned best in a loving, nurturing environment. During Collodi’s lifetime, however, fear and punishment were frequent themes in didactic children’s literature.

Collodi himself was a firm believer in education, at one point declaring, “Open a school, and you will close a prison” (Collodi in Person, p. 141). His novel about Pinocchio continually portrays the virtues of education and the evils of sloth. When the puppet works at his studies, he approaches his goal of becoming a real boy. When he neglects his books in favor of idle entertainments, he suffers such misfortunes as being abducted, jailed, or transformed into a donkey.

The development of children’s literature in Italy

Up to the mid-eighteenth century, reading material for European children was mainly instructional in approach and often heavily didactic in tone. Primers, alphabet books, manuals on etiquette, and religious catechisms comprised the majority of books for the young. In society at large, children themselves were most often viewed as miniature but imperfect adults and passive receptacles of facts, figures, and other forms of empirical knowledge. Rejecting this view, some pivotal thinkers began to change the way people conceived of children, thanks in part to the Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century philosophical movement that emphasized rationalism. The shift had something to do with social change: the influence of the aristocracy began to diminish, while the middle class increased in size and dominance. The family’s unit meanwhile gained importance and so did a child’s place in it. Children came to represent the future not merely of their families but of their nations.

The philosophical writings of the Englishman John Locke (1632–1704) and the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) posited that children were rational beings in their own right. Locke added that children should not “be hindered from being children, nor from playing and doing as children” (Locke in Demers and Moyles, p. 77). While his conception of the child was no universally embraced, his tenets contributed to changing attitudes about education. Rousseau was similarly influential. In Emile, Rousseau’s 1762 treatise on education, he argued that children are born naturally good but are corrupted by artificial, antagonistic institutions of society; in order for children to grow into virtuous adults, Rousseau recommended they be raised at home, preferably in the country. Parents should be closely involved in their rearing, the father serving as tutor, the mother as nurse. Nature, however, would be a child’s first teacher, honing the child’s perceptions and instincts, until about age 12, when the child could reason, at which point formal education was in order. Gradually, in keeping with this new phi losophy, children’s books became less dogmatic and austere; writers did not cease to moralize, but their tactics became less heavy-handed as the eighteenth century progressed.

Children’s literature in Italy continued to be heavily didactic. Its inception in the land can be dated to a contest in 1775, sponsored by Count Bettoni, for the best 25 instructive stories for children. There followed decades of moralistic tales highlighting qualities to emulate (generosity, courage, etc.), at first without children as heroes and in stilted language. The Roman Catholic Church heavily influenced children’s literature prior to Unification (1861). Indeed, several of the most prominent writers for children in the late-eighteenth century and nineteenth century were affiliated with the Church, including Father Francesco Soave (1743–1806) and the priest Giovanni Bosco (1815–1888). Their works were heavily didactic, with an emphasis on shaping the morality of the child reader. Exceptions to the grim reality of these texts did exist. Luigi Fiacchi (1754-1825), also a priest, wrote verse fables for children. And Giuseppe Taverna (1764-1850) foreswore the usual format of presenting dignified adults by using children as protagonists. Pietro Thouar (1809–1861), referred to as the founder of Italian children’s literature, wrote his Racconti per i fanciulli (1853; Stories for Children) with a calm sensitivity to the lives of children.

THE FAIRY TALE

The oral tradition in previous centuries relied upon fairy and folk tales—for the amusement of adults. Giambattista Basile (1575–1632) produced a significant collection of these tales in his Cunto de li Cunti (The Tale of Tales), published posthumously in 1634. Written in the dialect of Naples, the collection came to be known as Il Pentamerone (The Five Days) because it consists of 50 tales told over five nights. Among them are versions of many tales widely known today, including “Cinderella,’’ “Snow White,” “push in Boots,” and “Hansel and Gretel,” Basile’s tales were translated into Italian in 1747, German in 1846, and English in 1848. The collection was followed 60 years later by Charles Perrault’s famous French collection Histories ou Contes du temps passé: avec des moralitez (1697). Translated into English in 1729 as Histories, or Tales of Past Times: Told by Mother Goose, the book contained some of the most famous tales in the Western tradition: “Little Red Ridinghood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss-in-Boots,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Cinderella,” These tales, with their sly morals, were certainly meant for adults. Only later were they seen as proper fare for children, in a revival that marked another important milestone in children’s literature. The resurgence saw the first editions of the landmark German collections by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmarchen (1812; Children’s and Household Tales), and the Danish collection Eventyr, fortalte for born (1835; Tales, Told for Children) by Ham Christian Andersen. Once distrusted by the moralists, fantasy became another way to instruct children. Collodi himself, at his publisher’s request, translated the fairy tales of Perrault and other French writers into Italian in 1876.

Morality was still the keynote, though. Luigi Alessandro Parravicini’s Giannetto deserves special mention, because Collodi modified the title for one of his own tales. Published in 1857, but often revised and reprinted during the nineteenth century, Giannetto is a compendium of information about human beings and the world as seen through the eyes of young Giannetto, in, as Hawkes ironically writes, “his constant and never-thwarted growth in virtue” (Hawkes, p. 40).

In the post-Unification period, patriotism took its place alongside religion in influencing the content of books for children. Many intellectuals came to believe that educating Italians about their homeland was one way to foster a sense of cultural unity. To this end, several editors requisitioned instructional texts for the young, who represented the new country’s future. Education itself, including the dissemination of shared values, was seen as a prerequisite for democracy. Collodi, having translated French fairy tales into Italian in 1876, was approached to participate. From 1877 onward, he created a series of successful, primarily instructional children’s books—several were intended for use in schools—infusing humor and fun into them to hold the attention of his young readers. His approach was innovative and progressively bold. Collodi’s Giannettino (1876; Little Johnny), a remaking of Parravicini’s popular text, though refreshingly lighthearted for its day, was still “a few delightful scenes, isolated in the midst of much science” (Hawkes, p. 64). It remained for The Adventures of Pinocchio to break the mold, balancing lessons on overcoming sloth and selfishness—behaviors that resulted in fearsome punishments—with interludes of comedy and adventure in a way that turned the novel into Italian children’s literature’s first enduring work.

The Novel in Focus

Plot summary

The novel begins when Master Cherry (Mastro Ciliegia), a carpenter, tries to carve a piece of firewood into a table leg, but stops when he hears a little voice complaining that the carpenter is hurting him. Unnerved, Master Cherry gives the piece of wood to his friend Geppetto, who plans to make a puppet of it.

The resulting creation, which Geppetto names Pinocchio, springs to life and immediately proves to be naughty and recalcitrant. The puppet runs away and Geppetto, who gives chase, ends up in jail for his pains. Meanwhile, Pinocchio returns to Geppetto’s house; the Talking Cricket on the hearth reproves him for rebelling against his “father” and warns him against the evils of becoming an idle, good-for-nothing child. Enraged, Pinocchio flings a hammer at the Cricket and kills it. A series of domestic mishaps ensue as Pinocchio tries to attend to his basic needs: there is no bread in the cottage; an attempt to cook an egg fails when a chick hatches from it and flies off; and an old man dumps water over the puppet as Pinocchio attempts to beg for food from door to door. He returns home exhausted and drenched, falls asleep with his feet on a brazier of hot coals and wakes to find that both feet have burned off. When Geppetto returns from jail, he finds Pinocchio wailing over his lost feet and his hunger pangs. Geppetto relieves the puppet’s hunger with two pears he got from jail, and Pinocchio expresses remorse for his misdeeds, promising to behave in the future. Geppetto also carves Pinocchio a new pair of feet and later, to buy him a schoolbook, Geppetto sells his only jacket. Setting off for school, Pinocchio is almost immediately tempted to forego his duty by attending a puppet show. He sells his book for the price of admission; the other puppets recognize Pinocchio as one of them and he is snatched up by the puppet-master, Fire-eater, who threatens to use him as firewood for disturbing the show. Pinocchio’s pleas persuade him to relent, and Fire-eater sets the puppet free, giving him a parting gift of five gold florins to support himself and his father.

Intending to return home with the money, Pinocchio is instead lured into a new series of adventures: he meets a pair of swindlers, the Fox and the Cat, who try to kill him for his gold. A beautiful Fairy with blue hair nurses him back to health in her cottage after his attackers leave him hanging by his neck in a tree. Like Geppetto and the Talking Cricket, the Fairy tries to impart moral guidance to the errant puppet:

‘Good boys like to learn and to work, and you—’

‘And I instead lead an idle vagabond life the whole year through.’

‘Good boys always speak the truth—’

‘And I always tell lies.’

(Collodi, Pinocchio, p. 98)

During his convalescence, Pinocchio makes a startling discovery—his nose grows whenever he tells an outrageous lie:

At this third lie his nose grew to such an extraordinary length that poor Pinocchio could not move in any direction. If he turned to one side he struck his nose against the bed or the window-panes, if he turned to the other he struck it against the walls or the door, if he raised his head a little he ran the risk of sticking it into one of the Fairy’s eyes.

(Pinocchio, pp. 64–65)

Just as Pinocchio is about to be happily reunited with Geppetto, he again encounters the Fox and the Cat, whom he fails to recognize as his would-be murderers. This time, the swindlers dupe him out of his money. Pinocchio’s attempt to seek legal redress in the topsy-turvy Booby Town results in his being imprisoned for four months. No sooner is he released than he lands into trouble once again: he is caught in a trap intended for thieves and forced to serve as a watchdog—complete with chains and warning bark—for a peasant whose chickens are being stolen by a gang of polecats. Fortunately Pinocchio traps the polecats en route to rob the hen-house, and the grateful peasant sets him free as a reward.

On returning at last to the Fairy’s cottage, Pinocchio is devastated to see a headstone announcing her death from grief at his desertion. When a Pigeon arrives to tell Pinocchio that Geppetto has gone to sea in search of him, the puppet flies to the seashore on the Pigeon’s back. He arrives just in time to see Geppetto and his boat disappear beneath the sea. Flinging himself into the water, Pinocchio swims out to save his father, making his way to a distant island. A passing Dolphin tells Pinocchio that his father was almost certainly swallowed by a giant Shark.

Sadly Pinocchio journeys further inland until he reaches a village of “Busy Bees,” where none of the inhabitants are idle. Although the lazy Pinocchio has no desire to work for food, he finally volunteers to carry water for a woman. On reaching her house, he discovers her to be the beautiful Fairy in disguise—she has not died after all. The two are reconciled, and Pinocchio once more vows to mend his ways, this time in hopes of becoming a real boy someday. Only if he proves hard-working, honest, and obedient can this dream become a reality, warns the Fairy, who also fills Pinocchio with hope that he might somehow be reunited with Geppetto.

Thereafter, Pinocchio devotes himself to his books and becomes a good pupil, although mischievous classmates lure him from his studies with talk about a giant Shark. After this latest scrape, the Fairy, with whom Pinocchio is now living, warns him against further misbehavior. Rededicating himself to his studies and demonstrating obedience and truthfulness, the puppet is within a day of realizing his dream of becoming a real boy when his schoolmate Candlewick persuades him to run away to the school-less Toyland where everyone plays all day.

After five months in the Toyland, Candlewick and Pinocchio discover that they are turning into donkeys, like all idle children who have made asses of themselves. The wagon-driver who drove them to Toyland captures and sells them at the marketplace. Purchased by the manager of a traveling circus, Donkey Pinocchio works until he is badly lamed and his owner resells him. Pinocchio’s new owner decides to drown him and make a drum out of the donkey-skin. Thankfully, the Fairy foils the new owner’s plans: once Pinocchio is in the water, she sends a school of fish to eat away at the donkey-skin until he is a wooden puppet again. Escaping his owner, Pinocchio swims out to sea, where he encounters the giant Shark; it promptly swallows him.

In the Shark’s belly, Pinocchio discovers Geppetto, miraculously still alive after all this time. They joyously reunite and plan to escape by walking out of the Shark’s open mouth while it is sleeping. After two attempts, they make it to shore, with the help of a Tunny (Tuna) Fish that escaped the Shark’s belly too. As Pinocchio an Geppetto head homeward, they encounter the Fox and the Cat, now reduced to begging in the streets. Pinocchio rejects their pleas for alms, telling them they got exactly what they deserved. He and Geppetto journey on until they reach a hut, where they ask for and are granted shelter. The hut’s owner turns out to be the miraculously resurrected Talking Cricket, who tells Pinocchio that the Fairy witnessed his being swallowed by the Shark and now believes him dead.

Geppetto and Pinocchio settle down in the hut, and Pinocchio takes on jobs to support his ailing father. He is no longer in school at this point; he works and continues to practice his reading and writing independently. During one job, he encounters Candlewick again, still a donkey and dying from overwork. After five months of hard labor, Pinocchio has earned enough to keep his father in comfort and buy himself some new clothes. On his way to market one day, he encounters a Snail who used to work for the Fairy. Learning that she has grown ill and impoverished, Pinocchio quickly gives the Snail his 40 pence to help the Fairy.

That evening Pinocchio dreams that the Fairy visits him, praises his kind heart, and forgives him for all his misdeeds. On awakening, he discovers that the hut has been transformed into a beautiful house, his 40 copper pennies—now re-turned to him—have changed into gold pieces, and, most miraculously, he himself has become a real boy. Geppetto, restored to health and again practicing his trade as a wood carver, tells Pinocchio that all these happy changes are the result of his good deeds. Beholding his old wooden form propped up against a chair, Pinocchio ex-claims, “How ridiculous I was when I was a puppet! And how glad I am that I have become a nice little boy” (Pinocchio, p. 167).

Moral education of a puppet

The most striking element of Collodi’s novel is Pinocchio’s character. Not surprisingly, readers familiar with softer, more sentimentalized versions of the puppet-protagonist from later adaptations are often taken aback by his original persona and by the violence surrounding him. The puppet’s naughtiness at the start serves two purposes—to humanize him and to emphasize the moral trans-formation he must undergo before he can trans-form physically into a real boy. Tied to its times, the story can be seen as both personally and nationally instructive.

Most obvious is the personal message to young Italians. From the outset, the virtues to which Pinocchio should aspire are made manifest, especially industriousness. When the puppet declares his intention “to eat, drink, and sleep, and to have a good time from morning till night” rather than seeking an education and a trade, the Talking Cricket, Pinocchio’s first moral preceptor, issues an ominous warning that those who behave in such a fashion end up “nearly al-ways either in hospital or in prison” (Pinocchio, p. 13). The Cricket is literally flattened for his pains when Pinocchio flings a hammer at him, but his counsel proves sage. Pinocchio ignores it, only to suffer dire consequences that place him in repeated peril—imprisonment, abduction, and attempted murder.

The blue-haired Fairy offers similar moral counsel, exhorting the puppet to work hard at his studies, obey his parental figures, tell the truth, and think of others, not just himself. Echoing the Talking Cricket, she warns her recalcitrant charge that people who complain of hard work “end almost always either in prison or in the hospital. Let me tell you that every man, whether he is born rich or poor, is obliged to do something in this world—to occupy his time, to work. Woe to those who lead slothful lives” (Pinocchio, p. 99). Also, the Fairy holds out a possible reward to Pinocchio should he improve himself through work and education: the chance of becoming a real boy, the implication being that with diligence and obedience comes the potential for material rewards. A final set of adventures, culminating in Pinocchio’s rescue of Geppetto, allows the puppet to redeem himself and show that he has taken life’s lessons to heart. To support Geppetto, Pinocchio takes on work, pumping water for a peasant and crafting wicker baskets to sell. Beyond hard work, he learns the virtue of self-sacrifice: on hearing that the Fairy is ill and destitute, Pinocchio sends her the money he is saving for new clothes for himself, his generosity winning him not just her forgiveness but the humanity he covets. The Fairy, recognizing that he still is no moral paragon, chooses to reward his kind heart and honest at-tempts to improve himself because “boys who minister tenderly to their parents, and assist them in their misery and infirmities, are deserving of great praise and affection, even if they cannot be cited as examples of obedience and good behaviour” (Pinocchio, p. 166).

The message here can be extended from Italian children to a nation still in its infancy. The emphasis the story places on Pinocchio’s need to develop a work ethic reflects a prevailing attitude that Collodi and fellow Italians shared—namely, that citizens should be not only honest and virtuous, but productive too. To some degree, this belief may have stemmed from a desire to see Italy—economically outstripped by other European countries—become a productive, prosperous modern nation. Italy had suffered a severe agriculture depression in the 1860s and 1870s—a grim development since 60 per cent of the people depended directly on agriculture for survival. Italian manufacturing was still struggling to establish itself; a modern factory labor force did not yet exist and the nation lagged behind others in basic industries—”At the time of unification Italy had 500,000 cotton spindles: Britain had 30 million, France 5.5 mil-lion” (Duggan, p. 151).

COLLODI’S ORIGINAL ENDING

In July of 1881, Ferdinando Martini began the weekly Il Gior nale dei Bambini (The Children’s Paper) and commissioned Collodi to write for the paper, Collodi’s Storia di un burattino (Story of a Puppet) began in installments that year and continued weekly until November 10, 1881, at which point (the conclusion of Chapter 15) Collodi meant to end the series with Pinocchio hanging from an oak tree, “stiff and unconscious” (Pinocchio, p. 56), But the protest from readers was so loud that Collodi resumed his tales a few months later, under the new title Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio), and the series continued until January 1883. That February, it was published in book form. The book’s serial history is evident both in its episodic nature (Pinocchio moves from one adventure to another) and the suspenseful moments that concur with the ends of chapters. As Jack Zipes argues, the original structure of Pinocchio refutes the optimistic tale of development that came later, since Collodi did not initially in-tend to transform Pinocchio into a boy. Instead, the series first had a grim end: Pinocchio, the peasant puppet gone wrong, punished for his naughtiness, seemingly with death (Zipes, “Introduction,” pp. vix-vx).

In his educational text Giannettino (1876), Collodi mentioned the importance of increasing national production “so that Italians should not be forced to ask France, England, and Germany for so many, many goods, to pay for which, millions of lire are escaping beyond the Alps” (Collodi in Duggan, p. 155). Significantly, Pinocchio’s transformation from stubborn, wooden-headed puppet to proper human boy occurs after he becomes a productive member of society. The outcome sends a message not only to Italian children but to the newborn nationality as well: Italians, having just emerged from a history replete with outside domination, ought to rely on them-selves, on their own strength and that of their families rather than on outsiders or even religion, wnicn is not mentioned in Collodi’s story and seen as conspicuous by virtue of its absence.

Sources and literary context

According to critic Jack Zipes, Pinocchio forms part of the tradition of “Jack tales,” oral stories common in Eu-rope about peasant boys saved from scrapes by their own ineptitude (Zipes, “Introduction,” p. xiii). Collodi also included numerous elements from folklore, such as fairies, talking animals, and magical transformations, a reflection of his experience writing and translating in this

THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE

A form of comic drama, the commedia dell’arte originated In Italy about the middle of the sixteenth century. Guilds of professional actors, portraying stock characters, performed standard scenarios in which the dialogue was largely improvised. Often the plots revolved around the intrigues of young lovers and wily servants seeking to outwit rich, tyrannical fathers. Clowns and buffoons injected broad humor into the pro ceedings, and the happy endings were usually a foregone conclusion. The cammedia dell’s arte spread throughout Renaissance Europe, and puppet theater ultimately inherited the tradition, with marionettes taking on the stock roles once played by living actors. Among those stock characters were Harlequin (a masked figure in variegated tights who often played the trickster), Columbine (Harlequin’s equally mischievous sweetheart), Pantalone (a skinny, gullible old man), and Punchinello (a fat, humpbacked clown who became the star of England’s Punch and Judy show). Critics often link Pinocchio to Harlequin.

genre. What most readers remember about Pinocchio are two transformations. The first is the puppet’s nose, which grows longer when he tells a lie. Unusual noses are a feature of some folk and fairy tales, though Collodi created his own particularly memorable variety. The second is Pinocchio’s change into a donkey, the result of his laziness. The donkey as a symbol of ignorance has a lengthy literary history, stretching back to Aesop’s Fables (sixth century b.c.e.), Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (second century c.e.), and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600).

Collodi’s career as a political and satirical journalist and as a dramatist influenced the novel too. It lampoons several professions, most notably medicine and the law. Between 1853 and 1873 Collodi wrote six plays in an attempt to improve the quality of contemporary Italian theater. Although he achieved only limited success, he remained passionately interested in the theater, in the end plumbing his experience in it to invent his wooden-puppet protagonist Pinocchio. Featured in miracle plays, spectacles, and farces, puppets and marionettes had long been staples of the theater. During the Middle Ages, Italy often used them to enact biblical and epic stories, a tradition of which Collodi was probably aware.

Pinocchio’s journeys, his multiple near-deaths, his sojourn in the belly of a great fish, and his ultimate rebirth into a new life recall the classical hero Odysseus and the biblical hero Jonah. In addition, Collodi drew on various elements of the Italian theatrical form known as commedia dell’arte, including stock situations and characters (Pinocchio’s misadventures and creatures such as the wily Fox), slapstick comedy (Pinocchio’s nose growing when he tells a lie), and masks and disguises (sometimes worn by the swindling duo of the Fox and the Cat).

Whimsical, exuberant, at times surprisingly violent, The Adventures of Pinocchio is most often categorized as a fantasy, though it set out to provide moral instruction. Critics sometimes compare Collodi’s works to those of Edmondo De Amicis (Cuore [1886]), arguing that both authors were moved by the aspirations of a newly unified Italy. Unlike De Amicis’ works, however, The Adventures of Pinocchio transcended national boundaries, achieving global recognition as a classic of children’s literature.

At least one children’s literature historian at-tributes Collodi’s success to the heroes he created. His young characters “go about satisfying their own curiosity and desires by themselves, without the reproving parental eye upon them, as had never been the case previously” in Italian literature for young people (Hawkes, p. 71). Only when Pinocchio finds himself in a seemingly insolvable predicament does the plot develop to help him interpret the situation so he learns not to repeat it.

Reception and impact

The Adventures of Pinocchio was immediately successful, selling more than one million copies in Italy. Although Collodi did not live to see it, the work went on to achieve international popularity, beginning with its English translation in 1892. The Bookman, a London periodical of the day, praised the novel, particularly its unusual protagonist, noting that Pinocchio “has a very distinct personality, and most winning manners even in his depraved moments. But his greatest charm is a certain inexhaustible vitality” (Person, pp. 134-35).

Pinocchio gave rise to other distinguished works in Italian children’s literature. Credited with redirecting attention to the novel in Italy, the philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) wrote that Pinocchio is a tale for both adults and children because “the wood from which Pinocchio is hewn is humanity itself” (Croce in Frongia, p. 7). Of all Collodi’s successors, perhaps the most notable is Luigi Bertelli (1860–1920), known also as Vamba. Like Collodi, Vamba was first and foremost a humorist. His All Italian Children Are Called Balilla (1915)—about a boy who becomes an ant—features Italian youth during Unification; his The Diary of Hurricane Johnny (1920) features a naughty child who most certainly does not want to attend school. Italo Calvino’s (1923–85) first novel, II sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947; The Path to the Spiders’ Nest , also in WLAIT 7: Italian Literature and Its Times) features a protagonist named Pin (an abbreviated form of Pinocchio) and a structure that is also picaresque. More generally, it is said that many contemporary Italian writers, whose works have not been translated into English, owe a debt to the darker side of Pinocchio.

The Adventures of Pinocchio has inspired numerous spin-off tales about Pinocchio and his relatives, translations, imitations, web pages, and motion pictures. Along with the Bible and Quran, Pinocchio remains one of the world’s most reprinted texts. Nearly a century after Collodi’s work appeared in print, critic Martha Bacon summed up its enduring appeal:

Collodi set out, at the urging of his publishers, to write a book for Italian children which should celebrate diligence, deplore idleness, and convey the idea that man is rationally happy only through work. He sought to caution the Italian child that pleasure-seeking leads to misery and a donkey’s grave. He succeeded in writing a wry, elegant, comic, and wistful book, as universal as Pilgrim’s Progress, which it resembles in structure, as Tuscan [the language and region of such great Italian writers as Dante, Machiavelli, and Petrarch] as a terraced vineyard and antic as the commedia dell’arte, which informs it.

(Bacon in Person, p. 139)

—Pamela S. Loy

For More Information

Collodi, Carlo. Pinocchio. Trans. M. A. Murray. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Demers, Patricia, and Gordon Moyles. From Instruction to Delight. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Duggan, Christopher. A Concise History of Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Frongia, Terri. “Pedagogy, Aesthetics, and Humanism: The Three Muses of Italian Children’s Literature Theory.” The Lion and the Unicorn 19, no. 1 (1995): 50–70.

WALT DISNEY’S PINOCCHIO

The most famous film version of Pinocchio is Walt Disney’s 1940 animated musical. Walt Disney, who had produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, was influenced by his own reading of Collodi’s novel and by various adaptations including a 1937 musical. In the making of Pinocchio, he brought together the best animators, musicians, screenwriters, and technicians, leading to breakthroughs in animation and an Oscar-winning score that included “When You Wish Upon a Star”. Various critics have argued that Disney’s film is fundamentally different in tone and character from Collodi’s novel. Jack Zipes claims that the main character in the Disney film is jiminy Cricket, while Pinocchio is “uninteresting if not boring”; furthermore, Pinocchio’s transformation to human being takes “the unreal puppet who was believable” and makes him “almost too perfect to be true,” the “perfect ’American’ boy” (Zipes, “Towards,” pp. 19–20). Rebecca West speaks of stereo-types in the Disney film that are not present in the original: the puppetmaster Stromboli, who is a collection of anti-Semitic prejudices in Disney’s incarnation; and the Blue Fairy, who be-comes “primarily decorative” (West, “Persistent Puppet”).

Hawkes, Louise Restieaux. Before and After Pinocchio: A Study of Italian Children’s Books. Paris: The Puppet Press, 1933.

Killinger, Charles L. The History of Italy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Person, James E., Jr., ed. Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale Group, 1996.

Sahakian, Mabel Lewis, and William S. Sahakian. Rousseau as Educator. New York: Twayne, 1974.

Senick, Gerard J., ed. Children’s Literature Review. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983.

West, Rebecca. “The Persistent Puppet: Pinocchio’s Heirs in Contemporary Fiction and Film. “http://www.fathom.com.course.72810000.session8.html.

______. “The Real Life Adventures of Pinocchio.” University of Chicago Magazine 95, no. 2 (December 2002). http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0212/features.puppet.html.

Wunderlich, Richard, and Thomas J. Morrissey. Pinocchio Goes Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Zipes, Jack. Introduction to Pinocchio: The Tale of a Puppet, by Carlo Collodi. Trans. M. A. Murray. New York: Penguin, 1996.

______. “Towards a Theory of the Fairy-Tale Film: The Case of Pinocchio,” The Lion and the Unicorn 20, no. 1 (1996): 1-24. http://muse.jhu.edu/journal/lion and the unicorn/v020/20.1zipes.html.