Beyond Pinocchio : Political and Cultural Dissonance in Carlo Collodi's Primers (1877-1890)

Beyond Pinocchio is a meticulous examination of renowned author Carlo Collodi’s primers and his debunking Italian bourgeois propaganda ‘from within’. In his government-approved books for primary school, Collodi offered a view of society that was dissonant with the one promoted by Italian middle class propaganda in its very core values: the family, the State, and the cultural homogenization.

Collodi’s reputation as a supporter of bourgeois values has remained crystallized for decades, and even his most famous character, Pinocchio, has been seen as embodying those values for many years. Recently, however, this reputation has been questioned, thereby reframing the wooden puppet within an anti-establishment context.

With this book, Andrea Pagani proves how even Collodi’s primers deserve a careful re-reading, throwing light on an author too quickly labelled as an uncritical son of his times. At a time when a newborn State was aiming towards a standardized national community, Collodi wrote of a multicultural Italy, where the family is an empty concept, and linguistic diversity is an asset rather than a hindrance.