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Once upon a time there was…
—a king —my little readers will immediately say.
—No children, you're mistaken.
Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.
(C'era una volta un pezzo di legno.)
Collidi
“Thousands of years ago, I was also a Little boy…” (Mille anni fa, anch'io em ragazzetto…). So begins the autobiographical story, “When I was a Boy!” (Quando ero un ragazzo!) (1881 [1887?]) [1991, 409] by Carlo Lorenzini, the author of The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet (Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino) (1883 [1881]). The exaggerated timespan is the defense of a man who never grew up or, conversely, of a precocious child since Lorenzini indeed writes a companion story about an “anticipated Little man” (L'omino anticipato) [1991, 289]. Lorenzini's Pinocchio fiction captures the timelessness of the unconscious and his pen-name, Collodi, underlines the regressive nature of his prose. As his literary pseudonym, he assumed the name of his mother's birthplace, Collodi, a village in the Pescia region.
In Italian culture, Pinocchio is a staple for innumerable critics, writers, and psychoanalysts who all try to carve a niche in the vast literature of “Pinocchiology.” The text challenges all and leads to readings of almost every conceivable type, most especially of the religious, nationalist, and structural linguistic kinds (see Bertacchini 1993; ; Frosini 1971 and 1990; Genot 1970; Tessari 1982 et al). Pinocchiologists generally highlight the redemptive aspects of Collodi's beautiful use of Tuscan vernacular to compare Pinocchio with Adam or Christ at the expense of an analysis of the darker materials to be found here (see Contini 1992 [1974], 126; Bargellini 1942; Ferrucci 1970; and Gentile 1982). Even the so-called psychoanalytic