Pinocchio Challenge

Warning, I obsessively researched Pinocchio and so this months blog is dedicated to different people who have interpreted this story in images. 

I started this research because starting on the 4th of March there is a creative challenge by Monty Lee on Pinocchio,  so please be inspired and join in. 

I thought I would look into this story so ubiquitous to Italian childhoods and such a strong cultural icon of modern Italy. 

The tale of the wooden puppet Pinocchio created by a carpenter in Florence was written by Carlo Collodi 133 years ago on July 7, 1881.

Carlo was a politician who became a writer, fascinated by the idea of using an amiable, rascally character as a means of expressing his own views on life through allegory.  Collodi had fought in Italy’s first two independence wars of 1848 and 1859. When the country actually became an independent, unified state in 1861, the pro-democracy camp that Carlo Collodi had fought for had been marginalised and Italy become a monarchy where very few people had the right to vote, while the majority poor and illiterate population were disaffected.

“Man needs, first and foremost, to have food, water and a shelter. Only then he can be in the state of mind of listening to his conscience and feel the ambition of improving himself."    Letter Bread and Books 1877

”In 1880 Carlo Collodi began writing 'Storia di un burattino' (Story of a Marionette), also called Le adventure di Pinocchio, which was published weekly July - October 1881 in Giornale per i bambini. The Adventures of Pinocchio was published as a book in February 1883. Collodi’s children’s story only found worldwide acclaim when a translation appeared 2 years after his death.

The name Pinocchio is possibly derived from the rare Tuscan form Pinocchio (“pine nut”) or conflated from pino (“pine tree, pine wood”) and occhio ("eye").