Carlo Collodi Research Articles

Quando Pinocchio incontra Renzo & Lucia. Parodia della Bambina dai capelli turchini nella Fata di Anna Marchesini (in guisa di Gina Lollobrigida)

The papers aims to analyze the performance given by the actress Anna Marchesini (1953-2016) in the television drama “I promessi sposi” (1990), which sees her disguised as the iconic Blue Fairy played by Gina Lollobrigida (1927-2023) within the cult movie “Le avventure di Pinocchio” (1972), directed by Luigi Comencini and based on the homonym novel by Carlo Collodi. The imitation of the well-known star was in fact one of the most important “workhorses” in Marchesini’s comic repertoire. The essay makes use of the contribution offered by the audiovisual document (available in full version on RaiPlay platform) and Tullio Solenghi’s oral testimony, collegue and sidekick in that parodic sketch.

A Comparison of the 1940 Animated Pinocchio Movie and Walt Disney Studios' 2022 Live-action Version of Pinocchio Movie

Pinocchio is one of the popular classics of the Walt Disney animation industry released in 1940, the popularity of the Pinocchio series also prompted the animated film Pinocchio to be adapted into a live-action version in 2022. The movie is based on the classic novel by Carlo Collodi that tells the story of a wooden puppet named Pinocchio who wants to become a human child. There are different scenes from the 1940 version of Pinocchio and the 2022 version of Pinocchio. This adaptation process does bring changes in the meaning content when the story is adapted from animation to live-action. Based on this, this study aims to analyze changes in meaning in the 1940 animated version of Pinocchio and the 2022 live-action version of Pinocchio with a comparative method, data obtained from observation. The results of the study are that there are significant differences, in the 1940 animated version of Pinocchio scenes prioritize Pinocchio's self-transformation into a real boy through moral struggle and sacrifice, while the 2022 live-action version of Pinocchio adaptation emphasizes the emotional relationship between Pinocchio and Gepetto. The results of this research are expected to provide additional knowledge and new knowledge about film adaptation and the importance of considering changes that occur in both films and their impact on the content of meaning.
 Keywords: Animation, Live-action, Movie, Pinocchio Scene

The Analysis of Translation Techniques in Translating Fairytale Story “The Adventure of Pinocchio” (English-Indonesian Version)

This research aims to analyze the translation techniques employed in the English-Indonesian translation of Carlo Collodi's "The Adventure of Pinocchio." By utilizing Molina and Albir's translation techniques, the study explores the specific methods used by the translator, Lulu Wijaya. The objective of this research is to gain insights into the translation techniques utilized in fairy tales and their implications for cross-cultural communication and children's literature. Using a qualitative approach, data were collected through the analysis of documents. The researcher identified 312 instances of translation techniques, which were categorized into nine types. These included adaptation (62 cases), compensation (71 cases), borrowing (1 case), amplification (3 cases), discursive creation (4 cases), established equivalent (1 case), literal translation (150 cases), modulation (6 cases), and reduction (14 cases). Notably, the most prevalent technique employed by Lulu Wijaya was literal translation. The findings of this research shed light on the prevalent use of literal translation in the translation of fairy tales, specifically "The Adventure of Pinocchio." Understanding these translation techniques is valuable for the field of translation studies, providing insights into the challenges and considerations involved in translating children's literature. Furthermore, these findings have implications for cross-cultural communication and the effective conveyance of meaning to young readers. This research contributes to the understanding of translation techniques in fairy tales, emphasizing their significance and potential applications in the broader context of literature and intercultural exchange.

Mothers and National Identity in Carlo Collodi's Schoolbooks

Mothers and National Identity in Carlo Collodi's Schoolbooks

The Adventures of Pinocchio – Education

Carlo Collodi, a positive representative of the Italian petty bourgeoisie of the late nineteenth century, presented in the novel the moral virtues of a secularized rural Italy. He inserts moralistic exhortations and reflections in the novel, to give up the waste of time to dedicate to study, hard work and savings. Pinocchio's negative experiences and the good advice of the Fairy guide him in the end on the right path, after he understood the importance of study and work, thus fulfilling his desire to be transformed into a child.

TRANSFRONTALITY OF LITERARY IMAGES: EXTRAPOLATION OF THE ITALIAN PUPPET HERO PULCINELLA

The article concerns one of the most important characters of national Italian puppet theatre, the marionette Pulcinella, and its influence on the images of folk heroes of puppet and drama theaters, street performances and literary works in European countries. National invariants of this character in the theaters and literatures of Western and Central Europe from the time of the appearance of this character to the beginning of the twentieth century are highlighted. Due to the expansion of economic and political ties, from the beginning of the 17th century, Pulcinella, together with itinerant artists and puppeteers, begins its transition to most European national folk theaters and literature. Depending on the geography of the country, its national character traits and national stereotypes, Pulcinella changes his image, his name, his behavior, and language. However, what is the most important, each national puppet retains both external and internal features of their original predecessor, Pulcinella. Examples provided in the article prove that most of the national invariants of Pulcinella possess his main character trait, that is, a fight against injustice and fierce criticism of authorities. Such characters as the English Punch, the Dutch Pickelgering, the French Polychenelle and Guignol, the German and Austrian Hanswurth, the Spanish and Portuguese Don Cristobal, the Czech Kaszparek and the German Kasperle invariably pursue two main goals: to protect the wronged and to defeat the evil In each of the countries, the characters created on the prototype of Pulcinella, were warmly accepted by the public and became very popular, especially with common people. At the same time, they differed from the original with their national coloring; they became the mouthpiece of national character traits, national ethnic stereotypes. The article seconds the opinion of many literary scholars that the origins the marionette character of Pulcinella can be traced to the Italian folk theater hero of Maccus, mainly because Pulcinella adopts the features of that ancient character's appearance, such as an irregularly shaped head, a large hump on his back, a hooked nose, a large belly and lively shrewd eyes. With small changes and variations, these features of appearance are received not only by Pulcinella, but also by the numerous national invariants of this character in Europe. However, all these national invariants also preserve the typical traits of Pulcinella's character, such as cockiness, cunning, thirst for justice and victory in an argument. In the 19th century, the Pulcinella marionette ‘returns’ to Italy and transforms into the wooden puppet Pinocchio. Carlo Collodi’s novel becomes so popular that it is translated in many countries of the world, and the new characters modelled on Pinocchio, acquire national features, such as Zeppel Kern by the German writer Otto Julius Birbaum. This begins a new round of Pulcinella's influence on the world culture.

The long life of Carlo Collodi’s puppet between literature and cinema. Pinocchio: short excursus through screen adaptations and performances

The story of Pinocchio has not only influenced the world of literature but had also an important impact on different forms of art.Pinocchio’s charm is still very much alive, as is his morale. This paper is a short excursus through its screen adaptations. The best-known of them are shortly named in the abstract, the other ones are nominated in the full article.The first time Pinocchio entered the movies as a protagonist was in 1911. A few decades later, Carlo Collodi’s story also succeeded in Disney’s movie set, where it turned into an animated film.Pinocchio entered the small screen in the ’70s, interpreted by Andrea Balestri, in a miniseries directed by Luigi Comencini. Three decades later it was the turn of Roberto Benigni, who in 2002 realized his vision of Pinocchio, both as a protagonist and as a director. Years later Benigni joined the cast of a new film on Pinocchio, directed by Matteo Garrone and released in 2019, where he played Geppetto. This Benigni-as-Geppetto “Pinocchio” was previously nominated for a 2021 Art Directors Guild award for excellence in production design for a fantasy film and a 2021 BAFTA Award for hair and makeup.2022 seems to be a revival for Collodi’s story: Disney will stream a new film based on his novel, starring Tom Hanks, while a dark reimaging of the classic fable Pinocchio from Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson, and Patrick McHale, will be released by Netflix in 2022 in an animation project.

Under Pinocchio’s Skin: The Uncanny Woodenness of a Permanent Body

ABSTRACT Carlo Collodi’s Le Avventure di Pinocchio has undergone an extraordinary number of manipulations, showing the great malleability of a text whose protean capacity echoes that of its main character. I analyse Pinocchio from a psychoanalytical standpoint, considering the Unheimlich – uncanny – as a pivotal stylistic element of the story and exploring its function in Collodi’s critique of the Risorgimento’s prescriptive moral code. The uncanny pertains to a class of frightening experiences that lead back to what is known and has been removed by repression. In this light, Pinocchio emerges as a tale deprived of any morally successful teleology: instead of engendering a new bourgeois life, the transformation of the puppet into a ‘bambino perbene’ exposes the contradictory phenomenology of this metamorphosis, subtly announcing Pinocchio’s radical death. Pinocchio’s dead wooden body reveals the ineffectiveness of the moral-teleological project of the Risorgimento, which renounces its inability to restrain those unsettling forces that destabilise it from within.

Reading gender in classics of children’s literature: the anthropomorphic representation of gender in Carlo Collodi’s Le Avventure di Pinocchio

ABSTRACT This paper examines the way in which translation and re-editioning intervene in the representation of the mutable concept of gender in a classic of children’s literature. It explores Carlo Collodi’s Le Avventure di Pinocchio [literally: The Adventures of Pinocchio] (1883) and the first English translation of the novella (1892), as well as selected re-editions and reprints of this translation (1911-2011), focusing on the anthropomorphic characters of il Gatto [The Cat] and la Volpe [The Fox]. Through a comparative analysis of the ways in which gender is constructed through these two characters in the source text, the first English translation, and the re-editions and reprints, this paper foregrounds how the translation process can influence the portrayal of the social construct of gender that is presented to the child reader. The analysis reveals that the first English translation reverts to conventional gendered ideologies that reinforce the model of the androcentric society, an aspect that is absent from the Italian tale. This idea is carried through time in the re-editions and reprints, some of which were published in the twenty-first century after the social construct of gender had arguably become framed differently to how it was regarded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

CHASING MYTHICAL BEASTS: The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture by Katarzyna Marciniak

Reviewed by: CHASING MYTHICAL BEASTS: The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture by Katarzyna Marciniak Katarzyna Marciniak and Luisa Spang CHASING MYTHICAL BEASTS: The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture. Edited by Katarzyna Marciniak. Series: Studien zur europäischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur/Studies in European Children’s and Young Adult Literature (SEKL); 8. Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020, 623 pages. ISBN: 978-3-8253-69995-8 Everyone encounters monsters in their childhood. They fascinate and terrify us, but some also become our friends. All of them, regardless of whether they are good or evil, have something to teach us. This is the argument of the essay collection Chasing Mythical Beasts: The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture, edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, which looks at monsters and beasts from Greek and Roman mythology and their reinterpretations in contemporary narratives for children and young adults. It analyzes their functions in these narratives as well as the way they are received by their audience. Its aim, as proclaimed by its editor, is “to offer some food for thought and encourage other researchers” (29). The collection brings together classical studies, theology, archaeology, anthropology, ethnography, media studies, and modern languages, and while its main focus lies on literature, it also includes essays on other media like film, animation, and comics. The works it discusses come, like its contributors, from different parts of the world and address various age groups. The content of the substantial volume is arranged into five parts and preceded by an introduction by Marciniak. In it, she offers a definition of (classical) monsters and gives an overview of the theory and practice of monster studies, or teratology. Part 1 of the collection is dedicated to the Minotaur, “the most famous monster of Greek mythology” (41). It comprises six essays analyzing the hybrid figure and its dual nature in various works, ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retellings of Greek myths for children, over other illustrated myth collections from the 1850s, contemporary British fiction for young adults, postmodern fantasy literature and film, to Matt Ottley’s multimedia picture-book Requiem for a Beast. Part 2 deals exclusively with female monsters, starting with Medusa, who is discussed in the first two essays: one looks at her relationship with Athena in Richard Woff’s Bright-Eyed Athena in the Stories of Ancient Greece, and the other analyzes how two popular teen novels use her as an analogy for stigmatized teenage girls. A third essay focuses on the Erinyes and their resuscitation in Philip Pullman’s Amber Spyglass, while the last two contributions in this section discuss the Sirens in Anna Czerwińska-Rydel’s Bałtycka syrena and in J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Part 3 of the volume groups together “creatures of different kinds of equine component” (42), namely Pan, the centaurs, and Pegasus. Peter Pan is taken up again, now to investigate the figure of the Greek god, followed by two essays on centaurs: the first is interested in the centaur Cheiron, “the educator,” and his function in modern literature, whereas the second analyzes the reception of centaurs in Russian fairy tales. Finally, another two contributions [End Page 87] follow the trail of Pegasus through Polish children’s books from the 1960s and the 1980s and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. The essays that make up part 4 are concerned with “the concept of monstrosity itself” (43), opening with an analysis of the beasts in N. D. Wilson’s Ashtown Burials. The two following contributions transport us to the African continent: the first describes mythical beasts in the oral tradition of Cameroon, while the second traces the wobo, a mythical creature from East Africa, in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s W pustyni i w puszczy and in its country of origin. Another article brings together marine monsters from Greek poetry and Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, followed by an essay on two Egyptian tales featuring fantastic creatures. Concluding this section are an analysis of the Wawel Dragon in Stanisław Pagaczewski’s tales for children and a discussion of J. K. Rowling’s fantastic beasts and their Greek heritage. Finally...

Entre fakes e fatos: efeito Pinóquio no discurso mobilizado pelo presidente Bolsonaro na ONU

In this work, we promote a discursive analysis of a political cartoon accessed on September 27, 2021 from the political humor website, which makes reference to the speech mobilized by President Bolsonaro at the UN. For this, we also analyzed three statements methodolody that the president made at the UN, containing Fake News, which were released on September 21/2021, by the G1 website. Thus, through the theoretical and methodological conceptions of Materialist Discourse Analysis, through a Pecheutian approach, we try to analyze the subject-position, the interdiscourse and the discursive and imaginary formations that, inscribed in the constitutive historicity, that allow us to observe how President Bolsonaro distances himself from the facts and comes close to untruths to circulate Fake News in front of the international community, mobilizing in this way meaning effects of the character known as Pinocchio and that was created by the author Carlo Collodi, a character who became known for the proliferation of lies. For this purpose, we base our studies on Pêcheux (1969; 1999; 1997; 1993), in France, Orlandi (2012; 2007; 2006; 2000; 2001; 2003; 2005; 1987)in Brazil and other scholars, to promote this gesture of reading and interpretation and how the speech mobilized by President Bolsonaro works full of lies, producing displacements, as a unit of meaning in relation to the current situation in Brazil.

PINOCCHIO FROM FLORENCE IN RUSSIAN BERLIN

The article deals with the story of Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, translated by Nina Petrovskaya and revised by Aleksey Tolstoy in Berlin at the time of their collaboration in the newspaper “Nakanune”. Attention is drawn to the use of commedia dell’arte characters’ names in international political newspeak in connection with the press appearances of A. Gramsci whose biography is closely linked with pro-Bolshevik circles in Berlin and Moscow. The interest in the translation of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” in the Russian press in the 1920s was most probably linked to the beginning of Soviet-Italian relations and the choice of future course facing Russian emigrants. The hypothesis of the different positions of Aleksey Tolstoy and Maksim Gorky concerning the question of return to Russia is put forward. The circumstances of the choice of the book for translation and the alignment of translation by Nina Petrovskaya and processing of the translation by Aleksey Tolstoy are described. Emphasis is placed on the anti-fascist movement, the centre of which was Florence, the city of Carlo Collodi. Petrovskaya’s anti-fascist views and Tolstoy’s pro-Soviet stance enable us to see the tale from the perspective of social struggle and personal choice. The roles of both Russian authors in the work on the book and their relationship to the Italian-Russian patronage family Signorelli are clarified. The re-addressing of the tale, which predetermined the further oblivion of the Berlin book, is explained: the new translation was addressed not so much to children as to adults, Russian émigrés.

Building Children Character Through Moral Values in The Adventure of Pinocchio

This study attempts to analyze a fairy tale novel entitled “The Adventure of Pinocchio”, which talks about the story of the irrepressible marionette who longed to become a real boy. This study focuses on revealing the categories of moral value and describing the building children's character implied in this novel. To analyze this novel, the researcher uses two principles theory to find out the objectives of the studies. There are moral values argued by Linda & Eyre and the theory of children’s character building based on Lewis. The method of this study is qualitative research, which means it does not need statistical procedure to analyze the material. This study merely uses “The Adventure of Pinocchio,” a novel by Carlo Collodi, translated into English version by Carol Della Chiesa as the primary data source. At the same time, the secondary data sources are taken from other literary books and related references to support and complete the primary data. As a result, the researcher finds that some elements of moral values such as love and affection, sensitivity and not-selfish, bravery, self-discipline, and moderation occurred in the content of the novel. Meanwhile, building children's character can be implied through “The Adventure of Pinocchio's” fairy tale: honesty, responsible, regard, respect, and compassionated.

Пиноккио «красного десятилетия» на сцене и на экране

Walt Disney’s studio created second full-length film Pinocchio in 1940. Its plot and interpretation of the characters were significantly different from the Carlo Collodi’s novel. Disney wrote enthusiastic letter to playwright and director Yasha Frank, who staged Pinocchio as theatre extravaganza in 1937. This production has become a landmark of the Children’s Theatre Project in the framework of Federal Theatre Project, being visually picturesque, inventive and up-to-date according to its social message. It was a story about the complexity of the emergence of a new human, which was especially significant in the context of the ideas of revising the structure of society. There is a reason to see in the Pinocchio script an attempt to substitute theatre dramaturgy by circus language, so essential for the Soviet theater of 1910–20s. The plot was split into numbers performed by professional variety and circus performers, and was reassembled: gags were an organic part of this new plot. However, Frank may not have escaped the influence of animation as well. The article is based on Yasha Frank’s working script, photos and reviews. It examines circus and cinema elements that were used for the theatre’s Pinocchio by Yasha Frank, and its influence to famous Walt Disney’ studio cartoon.

Books Received

Books Received Mark I. West Folk Stories from the Hills of Puerto Rico. By Rafael Ocasio. Rutgers University Press, 2021. Part of Rutgers University Press's Critical Caribbean Studies Series, this bilingual anthology includes numerous Puerto Rican folktales that were originally collected and published by anthropologist Franz Boas in 1914 and 1915. Rafael Ocasio, professor of Spanish at Agnes Scott College, includes the original Spanish versions of these folktales along with his English translations of the tales. He also includes a scholarly introduction in which he discusses the history and cultural significance of these tales within the context of Puerto Rican history. The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales. Edited and translated by Cristina Mazzoni. Princeton University Press, 2021. In this anthology, Cristina Mazzoni presents English translations of twenty fantasy stories that first appeared in Italy between 1875 and 1914. Among the authors featured in this collection are Carlo Collodi (the author of Pinocchio) and Grazia Deledda (a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature). Mazzoni provides a scholarly introduction in which she relates these stories to the history of Italy during the decades immediately following Italy's political unification. This volume is part of Princeton University Press's Oddly Modern Fairy Tales Series. We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers. Edited by Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks. Chicago Review Press, 2021. Intended for grown-up fans of Ann M. Martin's Baby-Sitters Club Series, this collection functions as a companion guide to the series. The contributors to this collection grew up reading this series, and they explore how the series shaped their views on gender, friendship, politics, and other topics. Although these contributors write from an adult perspective, they still value the pleasure the Baby-Sitters Club Series gave them during their growing-up years. [End Page 432] Copyright © 2022 Children's Literature Association

Literatura para infância e autoritarismo: releituras fascistas de Pinóquio

O presente artigo aborda as releituras da obra Pinóquio (1883), comumente denominadas pinocchiate, enredos breves que foram publicados na Itália após a morte de seu autor, o jornalista e escritor Carlo Lorenzini, mais conhecido por Carlo Collodi (Florença, 1846-1890). O que motivou este exame foram os questionamentos acerca do valor simbólico da literatura para infância, de seu aspecto permeável a diferentes ideologias e de sua sujeição a diversos tipos de apagamentos, especialmente ao longo do século XX quando estados autoritários encabeçaram ações capazes de questionar a própria noção de civilização ou humanidade. Governos de caráter autoritário tendem a tomar a educação escolar como canal de cooptação aos seus regimes e, por consequência, os livros de leitura escolar se transformam em vetores modelares para que tal arregimentação se efetive. As derivações da obra Pinóquio destinadas ao uso escolar cujos enredos tomaram por base ideais defendidos pelo regime fascista italiano encabeçado por Benito Mussolini (Forlì 1883 – Mezzegra 1945) são exemplos concretos destes veículos de doutrinação.

The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring Their Parallel Worlds by Laura Tosi with Peter Hunt

Reviewed by: The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring Their Parallel Worlds by Laura Tosi with Peter Hunt Jan Susina (bio) The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring Their Parallel Worlds. By Laura Tosi with Peter Hunt. McFarland, 2018. Books speak to other books, both consciously and unconsciously. I frequently pair the reading of texts whose themes or plots overlap: Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer; Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; and Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter and Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But, although I often include both Alice and Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio in a history of children's literature course, it has never occurred to me to pair these two novels. After reading Laura Tosi's study that is intended to be "a critical narrative and a parallel reading of two classics, which records mutual interests and avenues of exploration between and across diverse linguistic, historical, and national borders of England and Italy" (2), such a pairing now appears obvious to me. The most useful aspects of this study lie in Tosi's carefully examination of Pinocchio, drawing upon her own scholarship as well as that of other Italian scholars not previously translated into English. As an Italian children's literature scholar, Tosi spends about sixty percent of the book examining Pinocchio and the other forty percent focusing on Alice. While Peter Hunt's name also appears in the title, he contributes just two short sections to this volume—the first in chapter 2, detailing how Alice and Pinocchio function as gendered children's books, and the second in chapter 4, discussing the use of fairies by Carroll, Collodi, George MacDonald, and Charles Kingsley—and in the Appendix his own quirky contemporary fairy tale, "The Strange Meeting in Wonder-Tuscany," in which he imagines the meeting of these two famous protagonists. Tosi acknowledges that Alice and Pinocchio differ in many ways, including their literary sources, authorial intentions, and the widely differing political and cultural backgrounds of the authors, yet she makes compelling claims for similarities between the two distinctive texts. Both books were written by eccentric bachelors who [End Page 192] published under pen names, and both were intended for a dual audience of children and adults. Building on the work of Ann Lucas Lawson, who has previously written on the similar nature of the authors' biographies, their frequent use of talking animals, and the pivotal use of courtroom scenes, Tosi argues that the books are also similar in their structure and composition: both are episodic wanderings of a protagonist who is confronted by a series of odd and somewhat threatening creatures during their travels. Curiously, both authors constructed the stories in two distinct sections. While Carroll intended Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass to be separate texts, the strong interlocking and mirroring of characters and episodes between the two volumes has led many publishers and makers of film adaptations to blend them into a single text. Similarly, Collodi produced Pinocchio in two distinct stages. Pinocchio I, initially published in the children's magazine Giornale dei bambini in 1881, originally ended with what is now chapter 15, which features the protagonist's gruesome death. At the request of the magazine's readers, Pinocchio II begins with his revival and chronicles his continuing struggle to become a real boy. Both texts are strongly influenced by the fairy tale and fantasy tradition. In addition, each is lauded as a national literary icon; Alice is considered stereotypically British and Pinocchio is viewed as an embodiment of Italian culture. Both texts are highly theatrical in nature, with Alice being influenced by the British pantomime tradition and Pinocchio growing out the world of puppetry. Alice and Pinocchio experience unexpected and grotesque body changes; after eating, Alice grows either too tall or too short for her environment and experiences an elongated neck, while Pinocchio is famous for his nose that grows when he tells lies. Metamorphosis occurs in both books, with the Duchess's baby transformed into a pig in Alice's arms, and...

The Princess Fainted on the Spot: On Ester Krumbachová’s Dark Tales

The Princess Fainted on the Spot: On Ester Krumbachová’s Dark Tales Edith Jeřábková (bio) and Francis McKee (bio) Edith Jeřábková: Recent research into the legacy of Ester Krumbachová1, initiated by the discovery of documents, artworks, writings, photographs, clothes, and other belongings comprising her estate, creates new perspectives on the life, film industry and culture of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in communist Czechoslovakia, the arrival of capitalism, and the swift neoliberal turn. However, it also presents difficulties with political and gender norms, and most significantly Krumbachová’s affiliation with future generations and the topics of our contemporaneity, such as feminism and gender fluidity, sex, food and cooking, care, welfare, plant and animal intelligence, interspecies communication, animism, holism, magic materialism, and object agency. Ester Krumbachová was a key figure in the Czech New Wave during the 1960s. She was a significant contributor to films such as The Party and the Guests, Daisies, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Witchhammer, and The Murder of Mr Devil as costume and stage designer, screenwriter, author, and director. After the Prague Spring of 1968 and the subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia by the forces of the Warsaw Pact, Krumbachová was one of many Czech artists effectively silenced and banned from Barrandov Film Studios (with a few exceptions) until 1989. [End Page 95] One of her many and entangled art practices was writing. Not only was she the author and co-author of many screenplays, stories, and theoretical and critical texts published in magazines and newspapers, but she also used the epistolary format as a means of practicing art and thinking in a semi-private zone away from government scrutiny. Two years before her death, she published what she called these “unintentionally forgotten and intentionally unsent letters” in her only book, The First Book of Ester (1994, 5). Krumbachová was always interested in mixing the high and the low, codes and experiments, the large scale and details, new and old, public and private. Her fascination with folklore and mythology, offset by her reading of the social and political texts of her time, gave rise to a series of dark modern tales, which are also part of the book. Both the letters and the tales form a unique kind of commentary and therapeutic writing at a time when the author’s freedom was being suppressed. The collection of Krumbachová’s stories was published last year under the title Dark Tales and edited and translated by Francis McKee as an accompanying book to the exhibition A Weakness for Raisins: Films & Archive of Ester Krumbachová at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. Dark Tales features a brisk style of writing and the same rattling sense of constant change. This transformative power, which in regular fairy tales is saved for quite rare moments of magic, Krumbachová treats as though it were a common occurrence, and squanders the magic in a postmodern manner as in a world in which anything can happen. This trans-power traces its historical roots back to the monumental changes that took place to the political and social environment during her lifetime, changes wrought by the Second World War, the coup d’état of 1948, the Prague Spring of 1968 and socialism with a human face, the normalisation period of the 1970s, the Velvet Revolution of 1989, and the arrival of capitalism and neoliberalism during the 1990s. This stream of magic also addresses gender fluidity, interspecies transformation, and communication as we know it from today’s narratives fighting the binary construction of our world. Krumbachová did not have children, yet in her library there are many books on fairy tales. When you were translating the tales with the help of two native Czech speakers, Natalie Kollegová and Alena Kottová, you must have noticed how her stories connect up to those of her predecessors, such as the Brothers Grimm and Karel Jaromír Erben; German, Celtic and European fairy tales; pirate tales; tales of Rumcajs the Robber; Lyman Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Karel Čapek; Jan Karafiát; and Carlo Collodi (just to mention some of the books and authors in her library). Surprisingly there are no books by Božena N...

Ideological Manipulation of Children's Literature Through Translation and Rewriting by Vanessa Leonardi

Reviewed by: Ideological Manipulation of Children's Literature Through Translation and Rewriting by Vanessa Leonardi Jochen Weber Translated by Nikola von Merveldt IDEOLOGICAL MANIPULATION OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE THROUGH TRANSLATION AND REWRITING. Travelling across Times and Places. By Vanessa Leonardi. Series: Palgrave Pivot. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 136, pages. ISBN: 978-3-030-47748-6 IDEOLOGICAL MANIPULATION OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE THROUGH TRANSLATION AND REWRITING. Travelling across Times and Places. By Vanessa Leonardi. Series: Palgrave Pivot. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, XV, 136 pages. ISBN: 978-3-030-47748-6 Palgrave Macmillan publishes a wide range of titles that explore the subject of translation from different perspectives. One of the most recent titles is the study by Vanessa Leonardi, associate professor of English and translation studies at the University of Ferrara (Italy). Using children's and young adult literature as an example, she illustrates the cultural and ideological changes that literary works can undergo through translation. Following current scientific consensus, Leonardi considers that the translation of a literary work is not a purely technical, neutral process, but an "ideological activity" that is influenced by factors such as the target language and culture, the target audience, the historical and political context, cultural and religious ideas and taboos, and last but not least, by the person of the translator and his or her individual approach to the subject. According to this view, literary translators do not create a "derivative and servile copy" of the original language work, but rather rewrite or recreate it. Since the original work is inevitably changed by this process, such a transformation through "manipulation" or, phrased more neutrally, "intervention" is inherent in every translation. In her monograph, Leonardi focuses on a particular aspect of this intervention, namely the question of what role, for example, morality, ethics, and politics or even taboos and censorship play in translation. According to her, children's literature is very well suited as an object of investigation. In the course of time, popular genres such as fairy tales or children's book classics have repeatedly been translated into different languages and cultures and thus changed ("manipulated") or transformed in different ways. In addition, one can observe frequent and significant simplifications, modernizations, adjustments, omissions, and other adaptations to the target language and culture, especially in translations of children's literature. The slim volume, about 140 pages, is clearly structured. Apart from the compact introduction and the concluding chapter, which gives an outlook on possible questions of future, in-depth research on the topic, the book contains three main chapters, which in turn are divided into several short subsections. The first chapter deals with fundamental aspects of the translation of children's literary works. After brief explanations of the definition and historical development of children's literature, it deals with the actors in the translation process (translators, editors, publishers, and others). The following two main chapters deal with the ideological manipulation of both intra- and interlingual translations—that is, the rewording and rewriting of a literary text within one language or during its transformation into another language. Leonardi demonstrates different forms of this manipulation with short case studies of internationally known children's literary works. In the chapter on intralingual translation, she discusses the rewriting of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio during the fascist regime in Italy as an example of the politically motivated, ideological manipulation of an original text. The feminist rewritings of Snow White by Angela Carter and Emma Donoghue are further examples of the ideological manipulation of traditional fairy tales. In Harry Potter, Leonardi shows how the original text is decontextualized and adapted to the target culture through the intralingual translation from British to American English. [End Page 115] Pinocchio and Harry Potter are also the object of analysis in the chapter on interlingual translation. Using British and American Pinocchio editions, Leonardi examines how the subject of violence is dealt with in the two different translations. In this case, different sociocultural as well as historical contexts played a role in the ideological manipulation of the Italian original text. Using the example of names in the French, Italian, and Spanish Harry Potter translations, Leonardi explains strategies to either meet the expectations and cultural understanding of the audience in...

From requesting to alms-seeking. The politeness formula fare la carità in nineteenth-century Italy

Abstract – This contribution focuses on one particular politeness formula for requests, fare la carita di ‘be so good as to (give)’. The aim of the paper was to reconstruct the meanings and contexts for the usage of fare la carita di in nineteenth-century Italy. The following sources were used: conduct books, dictionaries, novels and diachronic corpora. The essay first looked at politeness metadiscourse and examined the available language advice for requests in CGIO, a corpus of 51 nineteenth-century Italian conduct books. However, as there is none available for fare la carita di , three nineteenth-century dictionaries were consulted. These findings from the metadiscourse were then read against those from a qualitative analysis covering all the examples found in two of the most influential novels of that period, Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi , ‘The Betrothed’, 1840, and Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio , 1883. Finally, quantitative data from the historical corpora DiaCORIS and MIDIA were provided. This combined analysis (using metadiscourse alongside qualitative discourse analysis and quantitative data) produced the following results: the formula is used in two contexts, to make a (sometimes forceful) request and to beg for a handout. Both appear in roughly equal proportions until the end of World War II. After that, fare la carita di disappears from DiaCORIS. The paper tentatively concludes that the absence of the formula from the advice on requests in conduct books may partly be explained by its use as a specialised marker for alms-seeking, since conduct books fiercely criticise almsgiving to the undeserving poor.