Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Pinocchio

Tagged: Theme.

In Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio (1883), old Gepetto carves a Puppet which turns out not only animate (see Animate/Inanimate) but a blockhead Trickster. Pinocchio is naughty and self-destructive and, though he longs to be a Real Boy, must Learn Better before becoming flesh and blood. He is an Underlier figure for novels like Jerome Charyn's Pinocchio's Nose (1983) and Robert Coover's Pinocchio in Venice (1991). He is now most popular as the protagonist of Disney's Pinocchio (1940), where his anarchic naughtiness is instead represented as naive folly. [JC]