Pinocchio illustrations in the fascist period: history of implicit propaganda

The contribution aims to investigate the influence that the italian Fascist period had on the iconography of images, including the illustrations of Children’s Literature, using the representation of Pinocchio as an emblematic image for this reflection. Often, in fact, we look at the Great History leaving out the unofficial history, that of mass culture, which more than anything else gives us back the common feeling of the society between the World Wars, opening us to the complexity of a period in which the stories of those who lived in it dissolve. The contribution will therefore attempt to historically and socially frame aesthetics in the Fascist Period by retracing the relationship between images and propaganda and analysing, through the social and cultural context, the illustrations of Pinocchio and the educational and iconographic influences exerted on an entire generation of children and young people, adopting Avventure e spedizioni punitive di Pinocchio fascista as a paradigm.