Uważajcie na kałamarz! Wokół Historyjek o Alicji… Gianniego Rodariego
Watch Your Inkpots! Some Remarks about Stories about Alice… by Gianni Rodari

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to present the inspiration and extraliterary models of the children’s literature by Gianni Rodari on the basis of the example of an interesting series of stories entitled Le favolette di Alice [Stories about Alice]. The article indicates close relations between Rodari’s works and the development of modern mass culture and its virtual, also transgressive and exploratory, nature. The literary creation of the Italian writer was doubtlessly influenced by the development of television, oceanography (Jacques Cousteau) and the space programme (the Russian and the American “Apollo” programme). Along with the traditional forms which are accessible to children and young people such as painting, philately or shows organized in amusement parks, these processes formed the sensibility, the mass imagination and the temporal and spatial models of the new man – the participant and the co‑creator of mass culture and the new hero/protagonist of children and young people.Cognitive curiosity, the drive to intensively transgress any boundaries and the areas of the real and imagined, culture-related world, constitute bridges between literature and real life. This is motivated by the man’s objectivity, his activity, which opens various areas and facilitates the cognition of objects, and the forms and phenomena which exist in these objects.Gianni Rodari reveals the modern world for the sake of children and familiarizes the latter with its richness in the macro scale and in the micro scale, owing to the use of the grotesque and parables (apart from magic realism) which the author replaces with entertainment and amusement, creating metaphorical signs of reality.

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