Pinocchio, a political puppet: The fascist adventures of Collodi's novel

Abstract

This article examines four retellings of Pinocchio produced during the years of the Fascist regime, ranging from 1923 to 1939. The four texts will be analysed as a case of 'intralingual' translation, where the popularity of Collodi's puppet is re-framed and re-interpreted according to different political and educational priorities. I employ a narrative approach in order to determine how the new stories engage with Collodi's novel while also positioning themselves in relation to broader narratives circulating at the time. The diverse ideological dimensions of the re-writings, combined with their chronological breadth, make those texts particularly suitable for showing the breaks and continuity in the narratives circulated by the regime and rooted in pre-existing ideological discourses. The appropriation of the almost mythical character of children's literature will be explored in its ideological implications, and related to the priorities of Fascism at different stages of its evolution. © The Society for Italian Studies 2011.