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Pinocchio

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Art by Fritz Kredel (1900-73)
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Art by Fritz Kredel (1900-73)

The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le Avventure di Pinocchio) is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi. The first half was published in serial form between 1881 and 1883, and then completed as a book for children in February 1883. It is about the mischievous adventures of Pinocchio, an animated marionette, and his poor father, a woodcarver named Geppetto. It is considered a classic of children's literature and has spawned many derivative works of art, such as Disney's classic 1940 animated movie of the same name, and commonplace ideas, such as a liar's long nose.

Contents

Background

The Adventures of Pinocchio is a story about an animated puppet, talking crickets, boys that turn into mules and other assorted fairy tale-like devices that would be familiar to a reader of Alice in Wonderland or Brothers Grimm—in fact earlier in his career Collodi worked on a translation of Mother Goose. However Pinocchio is not a traditional fairy-tale world, containing as it does the hard realities of the need for food, shelter and other basic measures of daily life, even the setting of the story is the very real Tuscan area of Italy. It was a unique literary melding of genres for its time.

Pinocchio draws from classical sources, such as Homer and Dante, but more significantly is a part of the Tuscan novella or short-story tradition which found its genesis in Boccaccio's Decameron (1353) — as 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."
Collodi had not originally intended the work as children's literature; the ending was unhappy and allegorically dealt with serious themes. In the original serialized version, Pinocchio seemingly dies a gruesome death, hanged for his innumerable faults at the end of chapter 15. At the request of his editor, Collodi added chapters 16–36, in which the Blue Fairy rescues Pinocchio and eventually turns him into a real boy when he acquires a deeper understanding of himself, making it more suitable for children. The Blue Fairy, a female motherly figure, plays the dominant role in the second half of the book, versus the fatherly figure of Geppetto in the first part.

Children's literature was a new idea in Collodi's time, an innovation in nineteenth-century Italy (and elsewhere). Thus in content and style it was new and modern, opening the way to many writers of the following century. Collodi, who died in 1890, was respected during his lifetime as a talented writer and social commentator, but his fame did not begin to grow until Pinocchio was translated into English for the first time in 1892, but in particular with the widely read Everyman's Library edition of 1911. The popularity of the story was bolstered by the powerful philosopher-critic Benedetto Croce who had great admiration for the tale.

Several of the book's concepts have become commonplace, particularly the proverbial long nose for liars. The name "Pinocchio" is from Tuscany and means "pine nut" or "kernel". Its Italian language is peppered with Florence dialect features.

Analysis

Pinocchio puppets in diverse stages of construction in a shop window in Florence.
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Pinocchio puppets in diverse stages of construction in a shop window in Florence.

Pinocchio, in addition to a children's tale, is a novel of education, with values expressed through allegory. There are many ways to view these allegories. One is that they mirror the values of the middle class of the 19th century, in particular Italy as it became a nation state. For example, not following the schemes of the fox and cat (ie. thieving noble class) but instead working honestly for money and getting an education so you are not treated like an ass (mule working class). Not surprisingly, although the book was very popular, in many upper class families of the period it was not a book initially regarded as suitable for "well-educated" children.

It is also an allegory of contemporary society, a look at the contrast between respectability and free instinct in a very severe, formal time. Behind the optimistic pedagogical appearance, the romance is a sad irony, and sometimes a satire, on that formal pedagogy and, through this, against the nonsense of these social manners in general.

Derivative works

There are at least fourteen English-language films based on the story, not to mention the Italian, French, Russian, German, Japanese, and many other versions for the big screen and for television.
Pinocchio and his father Geppetto are reunited. (Disney, 1940)
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Pinocchio and his father Geppetto are reunited. (Disney, 1940)

Notable film versions include:

Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi wrote a famous Russian adaptation of the book, entitled The Little Gold Key or the Adventures of Buratino illustrated by Alexander Koshkin, translated from Russian by Kathleen Cook-Horujy, Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1990, 171 pages, ISBN 5050028434 (burattino is Italian for "puppet"). 
The Disney animated film Pinocchio (first released on February 7 1940), although a free interpretation of the Collodi story, is considered a masterpiece of the art of animation and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.


Steven Spielberg's film,  (2001), based on a Stanley Kubrick project that was cut short by Kubrick's death, recasts the Pinocchio theme; in it an android with emotions longs to become a real boy.


Japanese anime cartoons owe a particular debt to Pinocchio: Astroboy, one of the most popular figures of the genre, is based on the Italian puppet.  In addition, the story of Pinocchio was made into an anime television series by Tatsunoko Productions in 1972 as Kashi no Ki Mokku (Mokku the Oak Tree), and again by Nippon Animation in 1976 as Pikorîo no bôken (although Pinocchio was renamed "Piccolino" in this version).  Tatsunoko's series was shown on HBO in the United States in 1992 as Saban's Adventures of Pinocchio.


There is also a sequel, of sorts, by the Italian author E. Cherubini entitled Pinocchio in Africa, about how Pinocchio goes to Africa where he has a series of adventures.





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