MULTIPLE PINOCCHIO. THE CRITICISM BY THE GREATS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The multifaceted nature of a seminal text like Pinocchio has a history. The essay examines the first hundred years of Pinocchio's varied reception as a case-study of the new condition of a work of art which is appreciated at the same time by readers of all ages - illiterate children, their families, philosophers and literary critics. A text and an author rooted in their specific late nineteenth-century Italian context, and a cultural product liable to be re-signified through different mediums, and marketed accordingly. In particular, the essay follows and discusses the trajectory of Pinocchio's 'coming of age' in the essays and literary criticism of the twentieth century (from Hazard and Croce to Carmelo Bene and Manganelli), thanks to which the tale of a puppet is fully accepted with all its adult resonances.