Pinocchio Puppets and Modernity. The Mechanical Body

This Introduction to the edited collection 'Pinocchio Puppets and Modernity. The Mechanical Body' assesses the significance of Pinocchio in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in addition to his status as the creature of a nineteenth century traversed by a cultural enthusiasm for dummies, puppets and marionettes. This collection identifies Pinocchio as a figure characterised by a 'fluid identity', informed with transition, difference, joie de vivre, otherness and metamorphosis, making him a truly modern, indeed postmodern and posthuman, cultural icon.