Perché Pinocchio è un’icona universale? Ipotesi, spunti ermeneutici e un indizio paleoantropologico

Abstract

Which are the elements, the themes, the characteristics that make The Adventures of Pinocchio be the most widely translated book in the world after the Bible? Why is Pinocchio as a character able to speak to everybody and what does he have to say, that is considered so important at all latitudes? From the esthetic-literary aspects (the genre, the register, the language, the theatre) to the educational ones, and the ones linked to the representations or metaphors of childhood (the bad boy, the Puer), from the mythical to the anthropological references (the Trickster, the initiation rhyte), from the philosophical themes (Death, the Becoming) to the religious ones (the Christologic undertones), some hypothesis to understand the universality of the character created by Collodi, but maybe, more properly, come to his mind through the complicated paths of a collective imaginary stretching back a long long time.