achievement of national unity in 1860 and the setting up of a state independent of the
Church in which the institutions, and schools in particular (education became
obligatory with the Casati law of 1859) were called upon to promote the use of a
national language and creation of a sense civil responsibility and conscience. It was no
coincidence that the two masterpieces of Italian children’s literature, Collodi’s Pinocchio
(1883) and De Amicis’s Cuore [Heart] (1886) should have come out almost
simultaneously, in Florence and Turin respectively, the first capitals of united Italy.
Fervently republican and anticlerical, Carlo Lorenzini (alias Collodi, 1826– 1890) was
a journalist and pamphleteer, with a great talent for brief character sketches and
comedies of manners. He also translated Perrault’s tales and, in 1876, published
Giannettino, a reworking of Parravicini’s classic. He gave the first episode of La storia di
un burattino [A Puppet’s Story] to Ferdinando Martini, who issued a new children’s
paper (Il Giornale per i bambini). He broke off Pinocchio’s adventures, having him hanged
(the detail is important since it excluded any moralising intent), but the success of his
creation obliged him to bring the puppet back to life and a happy end. The tale was
published by Felice Paggi in 1883, with illustrations first by Enrico Mazzanti, then by
Carlo Chiostri. Pinocchio, a typical variation of the trickster, a rebel against the
established order, speaks the Tuscan tongue that was to become standard Italian,
without eclipsing the many dialects which remained mother tongue to countless
schoolchildren all over Italy. Ancient themes recurrent throughout literature—stories of
the whale and the prodigal son, talking animals and the human turned into an ass, the
land of Cockaigne and other wanderings—are all taken up and worked into the context
of a little Italy consisting of village and artisan life. Besides, all over the peninsular
masks and puppet shows were popular entertainment even amongst the cultured elite,
having been kept alive through the centuries (as witnessed by the continual exporting of
the repertoire and the widespread popularity in Europe of the various Punches and
Harlequins, all the way back to the seventeenth century).
More obviously inspired by an ideology, Cuore is the diary of a boy who enters
secondary school and discovers the great differences that exist between people as
individuals and between social conditions—great gaps that can be bridged through
human solidarity and a sense of belonging to a country and a culture, all brought about
thanks to the school. Edmondo De Amicis (1846–1908), a militant socialist, holds up a
mirror to the institution that above all others had the task of encouraging the spread of
reading. Between its publication and the outbreak of the first World War nearly a million
copies of his novel were sold, a feat that was only made possible by the strengthening of
publishing houses nationwide, such as Paravia in Turin, Treves, Hoepli and Vallardi in
Milan, Salani in Florence and Sandron in Palermo. Children’s magazines also started to
proliferate. In 1881, the first girls’ paper, Cordelia, came into existence. The Corriere dei
piccoli [Children’s Post] was launched in 1908 and published the first comic strips, in an
original format, that is pictures without balloons but with the text underneath in
octosyllabic verse (which could easily be learnt by heart owing to its distinctive rhythm).
Sergio Tofano, called Sto, the most inventive illustrator of the period, imagined the
adventures of Il signor Bonaventura, who ends up as a millionaire.
By the turn of the century the industry was crying out for writers to fill column after
column of special features. Influenced by Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari (1861– 1911)
750 THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE