<p>The purpose of this dissertation is to study the fantastic in the tales of the Italian children’s author Gianni Rodari. This analysis is grounded in the hypothesis that the fantastic is primarily characterized by two <i>esthetic qualities</i>, play and lightness, both of which are manifested at different levels in these texts, as well as in the relation between children and adults.</p><p>As a background for the textual analysis in the present work, an introductory review is provided of previous research, followed by a historical and theoretical consideration of fantastical children’s literature, together with a study of Rodari’s own relation to the fantastic. For previous research, the results clearly indicate an arbitrary relationship to Rodari’s texts, such that the fantastic is admittedly recognized, but is often confused with the fairy-tale. However, the present review of the history of Italian fantastical literature for children indicates that Rodari is writing in a fantastical and humorous tradition that begins with <i>Pinocchio</i>, a tradition that is <i>inter alia </i>characterized by its ability to bridge the gap between children’s and adult literature. Based on theoretical definitions of the fairy-tale (Propp, Thompson, Lüthi) and the fantastic (Todorov, Rabkin, Jackson, Held), the present work presents its own model for the study of Rodari’s texts, which are also compared with the author’s own poetics,<i> The Grammar of Fantasy.</i></p><p>A narratological analysis of a tale with both a children’s and an adult version (in itself an example of <i>crosswriting</i>) demonstrates that the fantastic and the humoristic are given freer rein when Rodari is writing for children. This appears to be linked to his concept of the child as the ideal reader, a reader primarily defined by an open and unprejudiced attitude to literature, rather than by age <i>per se</i>. The dissertation’s study of play and lightness (lack of weight) clearly confirms the hypothesis that these elements are a major component of the fantastic in Rodari’s texts; the results nevertheless indicate that play dominates on the level of language, and lightness on that of content.</p><p>One of the most important results of this dissertation is that Rodari’s texts, in addition to possessing certain stylistic characteristics, do not demonstrate any deeper similarities to fairy tales. Instead, the author’s tales share numerous characteristics with the traditional concept of the fantastic such as a clear reaction to the supernatural element, and a particular interest in both the material nature of language and existential liminal regions. At the same time, the results indicate several specific characteristics that distinguish the fantastic in Rodari from that which is written for adults, such as its explicit grounding in the child’s everyday existence and imaginative world, as well as its backgrounding of frightening aspects, with prominence instead being given to playfulness.</p>

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the fantastic in the tales of the Italian children’s author Gianni Rodari. This analysis is grounded in the hypothesis that the fantastic is primarily characterized by two esthetic qualities, play and lightness, both of which are manifested at different levels in these texts, as well as in the relation between children and adults. As a background for the textual analysis in the present work, an introductory review is provided of previous research, followed by a historical and theoretical consideration of fantastical children’s literature, together with a study of Rodari’s own relation to the fantastic. For previous research, the results clearly indicate an arbitrary relationship to Rodari’s texts, such that the fantastic is admittedly recognized, but is often confused with the fairy-tale. However, the present review of the history of Italian fantastical literature for children indicates that Rodari is writing in a fantastical and humorous tradition that begins with Pinocchio, a tradition that is inter alia characterized by its ability to bridge the gap between children’s and adult literature. Based on theoretical definitions of the fairy-tale (Propp, Thompson, Lüthi) and the fantastic (Todorov, Rabkin, Jackson, Held), the present work presents its own model for the study of Rodari’s texts, which are also compared with the author’s own poetics, The Grammar of Fantasy. A narratological analysis of a tale with both a children’s and an adult version (in itself an example of crosswriting) demonstrates that the fantastic and the humoristic are given freer rein when Rodari is writing for children. This appears to be linked to his concept of the child as the ideal reader, a reader primarily defined by an open and unprejudiced attitude to literature, rather than by age per se. The dissertation’s study of play and lightness (lack of weight) clearly confirms the hypothesis that these elements are a major component of the fantastic in Rodari’s texts; the results nevertheless indicate that play dominates on the level of language, and lightness on that of content. One of the most important results of this dissertation is that Rodari’s texts, in addition to possessing certain stylistic characteristics, do not demonstrate any deeper similarities to fairy tales. Instead, the author’s tales share numerous characteristics with the traditional concept of the fantastic such as a clear reaction to the supernatural element, and a particular interest in both the material nature of language and existential liminal regions. At the same time, the results indicate several specific characteristics that distinguish the fantastic in Rodari from that which is written for adults, such as its explicit grounding in the child’s everyday existence and imaginative world, as well as its backgrounding of frightening aspects, with prominence instead being given to playfulness.

La ricerca studia le riscritture delle opere di Gianni Rodari (1920-1980) in traduzione inglese attraverso la mediazione degli editori, critici letterari ma soprattutto dei traduttori tra il 1960 e il 2011. Nell’ambito degli studi sul contesto di produzione delle opere tradotte (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998; Chesterman et al., 2000), la prima parte della ricerca presenta le caratteristiche traduttive della letteratura per l’infanzia attraverso un’analisi retrospettiva (Toury, 2012) utile a contestualizzare le opere di Rodari in inglese per il pubblico Anglo-Americano. La seconda parte illustra la mediazione linguistica dei traduttori in quattro di queste opere in inglese a partire dagli S-Universals (Chesterman, 2004). L’analisi delle traduzioni di Patrick Creagh (1965, 1971), Jack Zipes e Antony Shugaar (2008, 2011 rispettivamente), condotta attraverso le nove categorie traduttive proposte da J. L. Malone nel 1988, ha mostrato diversi gradi di addomesticamento ed estraniamento traduttivo (Venuti, 1995) a seconda dell’età del pubblico ricevente. Specificamente, le traduzioni addomesticanti si sono rivelate creative al punto da avvicinarsi all’intento narrativo di Rodari nei testi originali. La traduzione estraniante di Shugaar del 2011 ha mantenuto i riferimenti alla cultura italiana del testo rodariano, mostrando un cambiamento di pubblico ricevente dal testo fonte (pubblico giovane) al testo di arrivo (adulti). / The research investigates the extent to which Gianni Rodari’s (1920-1980) works changed in their English translations through the mediating presence of publishers, reviewers, and especially translators between the 1960s and 2011. With reference to the cultural context of production of translated works (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998; Chesterman et al., 2000), translational patterns of children’s literature were firstly studied from a retrospective point of view (Toury, 2012) to contextualise Rodari’s books in English in the UK and the US. Secondly, the intervention of translators in four of these books was analysed within the mediation framework provided by S-Universals in translation (Chesterman, 2004). The discrete analysis of the translations by Patrick Creagh (1965, 1971), Jack Zipes and Antony Shugaar (2008, 2011 respectively), based on the nine translational trajections identified by J. L. Malone (1988), showed that the translators adopted different foreignising and domesticating strategies (Venuti, 1995) according to the intended public. More specifically, domesticating strategies presented a high degree of creativity in line with Rodari’s original narrative purpose, whereas Shugaar’s foreignising translation (2011) retained references to the Italian culture as in Rodari’s source text, marking a shift of audience from children to adults, from the Italian to the English target text.