Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Foreword: Pinocchio and Children Literature

2004; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/q.i..v25i1.9216

2293-7382

Patrizia Bettella,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

With the world-wide celebrations for the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of Carlo Collodi's Le avventure di Pinocchio just behind us and with the new or revived attention in recent years to minority literature and cultural studies, it is very appropriate to devote a special issue of Quaderni d'italianistica to Pinocchio.' The articles presented here testify not only to the ever-growing interest in and to the generativity of Collodi's master- piece, but also to the scholarly commitment of bringing Pinocchio and chil- dren's literature from the traditional sphere of literary analysis into the domain of cultural studies.Expressions of 'low culture' such as television, film, Reality TV shows and Hollywood cinema are traditionally viewed with suspicion by intellectuals and excluded from academic scholarship, while children's literature is often confined to the specialized area of minority literature.In recent years however, even among Italian scholars, more emphasis has been placed on the significance of a broad-ranging concept of culture, on the need to transcend rigid distinction between 'high' and 'low culture' and give serious consideration to various aspects of cultural practice such as children's literature, film, television and Reality TV.By viewing such instances of popular culture as an expression of social, polit- ical and power relations, the articles in this issue contribute to the cultur-In 2003 the anniversary of Le avventure di Pinocchio was honoured in North America with scholarly sessions at conferences in both Canada and the United States.In fact, some of the articles in this issue (Bettella's, Anselmi's, and Hogan's) were first presented during a special session on Pinocchio and children's literature at the congress of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies held, that year, in Halifax.For bibliographical reference on Collodi and Pinocchio see Bruno Traversetti Introduzione a Collodi.The Fondazione Nazionale "Carlo Collodi," established in 1960,