«Sedetevi in circolo, miei piccoli amici». La pubblicistica per l’infanzia di Grazia Deledda: proposte di analisi linguistica

rita fresu

First

2022-01-01

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Abstract

The contribution examines the educational-recreational publications of Grazia Deledda (Nuoro, 1871 – Rome, 1936), focusing specifically on the linguistic choices of production aimed at children. This is a minor narrative genre, little investigated, to which the Sardinian writer devoted herself in a non-occasional manner during her existence, starting from the first collection of short stories «Nell’azzurro» (Milan-Rome, Trevisani, 1890), some of which had already appeared in the weekly magazine «Il Paradiso dei Bambini. Giornale illustrato per i ragazzi», published by Edoardo Perino, up to the anthology «Il dono di Natale», published after about forty years (Milan, Fratelli Treves, with illustrations by Giulio Rosso, 1930). Other texts intended for young readers are placed between the two collections: among these «Giaffàh» (1892, then, in 1931, «Giaffà. Stories for children»), which narrates the bizarre adventures, with a singular exotic setting, of the very well-known popular figure of the crafty-fool who inspired the title of the collection. The linguistic study conducted on this text, also through comparison with the printed antecedent of the opening story, allows us to show the oral matrix of Deledda's tale and, in a broader perspective, the stylistic-linguistic evolution accomplished by Deledda also in the context of production aimed at children, which the Sardinian writer, in accordance with a lucid and precocious pedagogical-cultural project, intentionally wanted free from the didacticism typical of contemporary publications for children.