Quando le parole creano i mondi. Il linguaggio nelle Avventure di Pinocchio

Abstract

When words create worlds. Language in The Adventures of PinocchioThe paper deals with two crucial themes for Collodi’s masterpiece –death and linguistic creativity.The theme of death emerges from linguistic hints, even from Pinocchio’sname. It comes in macabre and grand-guignolesque forms inthe first part of the novel, and goes on to assume comic shapes in thethe second part, when death becomes a simple tool to blackmail andthreaten. Such linguistic hints are part of a wider strategy that serves thenational educational project pursued by Italian intellectuals and editorsin the second half of 19th century, and that also includes the promotionof spoken Florentine as literary, as well as official, language for thewhole nation. Collodi, however, goes further, and uses language as anactual creative tool, able to produce the entire world of the narrationfrom sentences, sayings, proverbs, even single words.