Dal mito alla realtà: Gianni Rodari classicista

The tradition of studies regarding literature between Greece and Italy until 2020, found an important reference point in Sofia Gavriilidis, who taught at the University of Thessaloniki. A scholar of Collodi, Gavriilidis followed the fortunes of Pinocchio of Greece, in connection with the Italian scholar Daniela Marcheschi. Alongside Collodi, however, stands Rodari (of which Marcheschi edited the Meridiano in 2020), an author who transformed children’s literature in the second half of the twentieth century, and contributed to a critical examination with Grammatica della fantasia (1973). Rodari examined Aesop and the tradition of the fable (reversing the behaviour of the characters and/or the moral message), and reworked some figures of Greek culture and, in particular, Pygmalion, Admetus, King Midas and Atalanta. This article considers the rewritings proposed by Rodari who first revised the classical tradition and then his own work, proposing multiple versions of the same text (in the cases of Admetus and King Midas). Several times, therefore, the writer felt the need to include classical culture into the minds of children of the second half of the twentieth century, showing the vitality of the relationship between Greece and Italy. The article tries to investigate Rodari’s objectives, working method and classicist writing style in relation to the Grammatica della fantasia.