THE CULTURAL NON-HUMAN ANIMAL ANALYSING ITALO CALVINO’S ITALIAN FAIRY TALES WITH ZOOSEMIOTICS
THE CULTURAL NON-HUMAN ANIMAL ANALYSING ITALO CALVINO’S ITALIAN FAIRY TALES WITH ZOOSEMIOTICS

Summary/Abstract: The Cultural Non-human Animal. Analysing Italo Calvino’s Italian Fairy Tales with Zoosemiotics. This article analyses traditional Italian fairy tales retold by Italo Calvino in 1956 and their relationships to nature and culture. Zoosemiotics, a branch of both semiotics and animal studies, argues that nature and culture are not separated and in contrast and that, instead, culture is a limited part of nature. This conceptual change envisions different relationships between humans and animals as well as more broadly the end of animal anthropomorphism. Methodologically, the article applies a zoosemiotic analysis to the Italian fairy tales retold by Calvino. The article concludes that some animals in the fairy tales are still anchored to the old view while others move towards the cultural terrain, showing cultural attitudes and inhabiting a cultural area usually reserved for human animals. This shift leads to an inverted semiotic destiny of humans and animals in fairy tales: while animals are traditionally represented as symbols, Calvino’s rewriting turns them into icons, representing only themselves, marked by a neat individuality and independence from their species; while humans are, conversely, usually represented as icons, Calvino’s stories turn them into symbols, such as ingratitude or jealousy. The article shows the usefulness of zoosemiotics and nature/culture in analysing non human-animals in fairy tales and adds to earlier studies considering non-human animals in Calvino’s fairy tales as an epitome of Anthropocene.

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