Φαγητό, άδειο στομάχι και χιουμοριστικές πτυχές της βρώσης στην παιδική λογοτεχνία. Η πείνα του Πινόκιο

Abstract

The classic wooden hero, Pinocchio, is known for his nose, which grows and shrinks beyond his will and control every time he does something naughty or tells a lie.  Despite the various interpretative approaches attributed to a bold telltale nose, a quite provocative subject is Pinocchio’s relationship with food, or rather, with the lack of food and the perpetual quest for it. The masterpiece of Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, could indeed have been interpreted based on Pinocchio’s hunger. This is because Pinocchio is hungry, constantly hungry and suffers from this “dreadful illness called hunger”. “He is dying of hunger”. It is the hero’s voracious hunger that pushes him to misfortunes and other nightmarish encounters with the cruel face of life. It is a hunger beyond realism, depicted with hyperboles; each time the wooden boy confronts it, this hunger becomes comic and tragic through carnivalistically humorous twists and intrigues. In The Adventures of Pinocchio, the grotesque realism coexists with subtle irony, two inherently contradictory forms of expression and techniques of producing humor. This is the main reason for suggesting a new reading of the book, focusing on the gastronomically extreme curiosities and paradoxical mythical facts about nutrition, connecting the aspect of Pinocchio’s wooden existence with a principally human instinct: hunger.