SOURCE: "Carlo Collodi as Translator: From Fairy Tale to Folk Tale," in The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 12, No. 2, December, 1988, pp. 61-73.

In the following essay, Zago considers the techniques Collodi used when translating the tales of Charles Perrault, Mme. d'Aulnoy, and Mme. Leprince de Beaumont.

There is a general consensus among critics of Collodi in acknowledging the indebtedness, on the part of the author of Pinocchio, toward the French fairy tales. Few have explored the topic much further, and yet it seems to me that this important influence on Collodi's work deserves closer scrutiny. Collodi's translation method appears to have been by his own training as a journalist and by the interest in folklore studies that accompanied the rise in patriotic sentiment in Italy during the nineteenth century.

My focus will be on Collodi's treatment of Peau d'Ane (Donkey-Skin), and shall also look at his handling of...