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The article aims to examine the fairytail Weihnachtsmärchen - that is the Fiaba per il Natale, in Italian translation -, written in 1907 by Lou Andreas von Salomé, one of the most effervescent and libertarian intellectual figures in late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century in Europe. Through the codes of the imaginary and the fantastic typical of the fairy tale, Salomé constitutes an ontology and a poetics of childhood in which delicacy, enchantment and wonder preserve the mystery of life, which, in the metaphor of Christmas remembered in the story, sustains the existence of the child in his thoughtful walk in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking back to the cultural context of the German Neuhumanismus the work realized by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the search and arrangement of fairy tales coming from the tradition of Germanic popular poetry, the article focuses in particular on the fairy tale Hänsel und Gretel, considering its narrative structure and the pedagogical meanings enclosed, aimed at both the world of children and adults.

The terms "fairytale" and "fabulous" can be associated with Calvino's work from the very beginning and the aspect that brings him closer to the fairytale than any other is that of having as the task of his own narration/narration, humanity, personal identity: many fairytales in fact have as their protagonist a young man, or even a child, and it is precisely from a child, from the Pin from Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, the entire calvinian narration will start. Moreover, the writer highlights the educational peculiarity of the fairy tale, which cannot be found in its content, or rather, not only in the fact of hearing and telling them. The fairytale is perhaps the genre that remains dominant, even within the different genres traversed by Calvino: it arouses his interest both for the correspondence with his fantastic vein that is evident from the Sentiero, and for the studies of structuralists, Propp and Greimas in particular. The article thus aims to reread the figure of Calvino through these two components, fabulous on the one hand and structuralism on the other, trying to highlight how the immersion in the territories of the fabulous, with the publication of Fiabe italiane, have somehow "contaminated" his subsequent writing, feeding that fantastic vein that has always characterized it, up to those works markedly linked to the participation to structuralism and semiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking back to the cultural context of the German Neuhumanismus the work realized by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the search and arrangement of fairy tales coming from the tradition of Germanic popular poetry, the article focuses in particular on the fairy tale Hänsel und Gretel, considering its narrative structure and the pedagogical meanings enclosed, aimed at both the world of children and adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper intends to offer an in-depth analysis of Antonio Gramsci's contribution to the reflection on children's literature, whose non existence, in the years in which the intellectual writes the Quaderni from the fascist prison, leads to a "nexus of problems" concerning the lack of a national popular Italian literature. There are many suggestions that rose through the interest shown by Gramsci, on various fronts, towards children's literature: from the 'public' Gramsci of the Quaderni to the 'private' Gramsci of the Lettere, from the affirmation of the need for literary enjoyment of the people to the exemplary exercise of a 'living paternity', we not only grasp an example of method, but also a militant pedagogical commitment to the people/childhood world expressed with extraordinary clarity, rigor, sensitivity, yet to be investigated to rediscover its richness and actuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]