The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (published in Florence in 1883) is probably the most widely translated book in world literature: it has reached almost every language, from English to Arabic, French to Greek, German to Chinese, Spanish to Russian and Persian, and so on.
The Pinocchio International project is a collaboration between the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, Fondazione Collodi and UNISER Pistoia, which aims to recount for the first time the entire journey of a book that, born in 19th-century Tuscany, has continued to travel all over the world for the last 140 years, leaving the narrow confines of children’s stories and establishing itself as one of the great masterpieces of literature. Over one hundred researchers from all over the world have investigated not only the translations of the work into almost all languages and dialects, but also the impact that the figure of Pinocchio has had on the cultural imagination and production of the countries in which it has landed. The project is supported by the Istituto per l’Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani with the collaboration of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Italian Cultural Institute in Sydney, leading to the forthcoming publication of a comprehensive Pinocchio Atlas.
In this presentation, in conversation with Professor Bernadette Luciano and Lindsey Jones, authors of the contribution on Pinocchio in Australia and New Zealand, Mario Casari will recount the main stages of this journey, through quantitative data, stories of translators, the role of illustrators, cultural adaptations, and the transformations of Collodi’s pyrotechnic style in different languages: the result is a thread that runs through a century and a half of the social and cultural history of the world.
Mario Casari is Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome. He is interested in the reception of Italian literature in the languages of the Middle East, and has dealt in particular with the journey of Pinocchio, with various articles and essays, and the editing of the volume Pinocchio in volo. Tra immagini e letterature (together with Rossana Dedola; Milan 2008). He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Pinocchio Atlas.
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