Pinocchio

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The Adventures of Pinocchio (Italian: Le avventure di Pinocchio) is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi. The first half was originally a serial between 1881 and 1883, and then later 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 1 Background 2 Analysis 3 Derivative works 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Background

“	Once upon a time, there was ... 'A king!' my little readers will say right away. No, children, you are wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood....	„

The Adventures of Pinocchio is a story about an animated puppet, talking crickets, boys who turn into mules and other fairy tale 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's world is not a traditional fairy-tale world, containing, as it does, the hard realities of the need for food, shelter, and the basic measures of daily life, indeed 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, it is part of the Tuscan novella (short-story) tradition whose genesis is 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 originally had not intended the novel as children's literature; the ending was unhappy and allegorically dealt with serious themes. In the original, serialized version, Pinocchio 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" (as the Disney version names her) rescues Pinocchio and eventually transforms him into a real boy, when he acquires a deeper understanding of himself, making the story suitable for children. In the second half of the book, the maternal figure of the Blue Fairy is the dominant character, versus the paternal 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 after 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 greatly admired the tale.

Several of the book's concepts have become commonplace, particularly the long nose for liars. The Tuscan male name "Pinocchio" means "pine nut" and "kernel". The story's Italian language is peppered with Florentine dialect features.

[edit] Analysis

Pinocchio, in addition to being a children's tale, is a novel of education, with values expressed through allegory. There are many ways of viewing these allegories. One is that they mirror the values of the middle class of the nineteenth century, in particular, that of Italy, as it became a nation state.^[1] For example, not following the schemes of the fox and cat (i.e. the thieving noble class), but, instead, honestly working for money, and obtaining an education, so that one is not treated like an ass (the mule working class). Unsurprisingly, although the book was very popular, in many upper-class families of the time it initially was not a book regarded suitable for "well-educated" children.^{[citation needed]}

It also is 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 sadly ironic, and sometimes a satire of that very formal pedagogy and, through this, against the nonsense of these social manners in general.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 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.

Notable film versions include:

See also:The Adventures of Pinocchio (film)

• The Disney animated film Pinocchio (released February 7, 1940), although a free interpretation of the Collodi story, is considered a masterpiece of the art of animation, and was deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It is this version that first refers to the principal female character as the "Blue Fairy".
• GoodTimes' Pinocchio, a Golden Films-produced animated adaptation of the tale.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio (1936), an historically-notable, unfinished Italian animated feature film.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), a film by Steve Barron.
• Geppetto (2000), a television film broadcast on The Wonderful World of Disney starring Drew Carey in the title role.
• Pinocchio (2002), a live-action film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni.
• Pinocchio 3000 (2003), a Canadian CGI film.

Other adaptations include:

• In 1911, Italian author E. Cherubini wrote Pinocchio in Africa about how Pinocchio goes to Africa where he has a series of adventures.
• Japanese manga Artist Osamu Tezuka was ispired by this charming tale when he created the popular icon Astroboy. 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 The Adventures of Piccolino (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.
• The Japanese superhero Kikaider (1972), created by Shotaro Ishinomori, was partly inspired by Pinocchio (and by Frankenstein's monster).
• Though not actually an adaptation of the story proper, the video game Toy Pop released by Namco in 1986 features a character named "Pino", who was inspired by the Pinocchio character. It was a Japan-only release until it was included in Namco Museum Vol.1, which was released in the United States in 1995.
• Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi wrote a famous Russian adaptation of the book, entitled The Little Gold Key or the Adventures of Buratino (1936) illustrated by Alexander Koshkin, translated from Russian by Kathleen Cook-Horujy, Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1990, 171 pages, SBN 5-05-002843-4 (burattino is Italian for "puppet").
• Steven Spielberg's film, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (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.
• Pinocchio briefly appears in the 2001 movie Shrek and has a larger role in the 2004 sequel Shrek 2 and the 2007 sequel Shrek the Third.
• Pinocchio and Geppetto are both major characters in the ongoing comic book series Fables, written by Bill Willingham, first published in 2003.
• The animated TV show The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2001) has an episode titled "Nursery Crimes / My Peeps" (2004) where Pinocchio tries to eat Billy's flesh to become a real boy, but fails.
• The first episode of season 4 the of animated TV show Family Guy (aired in the UK in 2007) contains a brief spoof sketch featuring Pinocchio and Geppetto (the Disney versions of the characters).

[edit] See also

• Jiminy Cricket
• Blue Fairy

[edit] Notes

1. ^ See Rebecca West, "The Persistent Puppet".

[edit] References

• "The Persistent Puppet: Pinocchio's heirs in contemporary fiction and film" — a seminar by Rebecca West from the University of Chicago

[edit] Further reading

• Dual Language Version, translated by Nicolas J. Perella, 1986, and several later reprints, ISBN 0-520-07782-2, ISBN 0-520-24686-1

[edit] External links

• The Adventures of Pinocchio, available at Project Gutenberg. (translated from Italian by Carol Della Chiesa)
• Pinocchio: the Tale of a Puppet, available at Project Gutenberg. (illustrated by Alice Carsey 1916)
• The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1926, a 400+ page edition translated by Carol Della Chiesa, illustrations by Attilio Mussino (1878-1954, Italy) from the 1911 edition.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio — the book, in Italian.
• Pinocchio website, by the Carlo Collodi National Foundation