Appunti per una polverologia. Polveri e magia nella letteratura per l’infanzia

Contrary to what one might think, dust with magical powers, fairy dust, has not always distinguished the metamorphoses typical of that fairy fantasy literature usually considered intended for childhood and adolescence. Starting from Basile's early fairy tale collections, the contribution investigates the presence and role of dust – also understood as an invisible or hardly perceptible element – within “children's” literary production from the mid-seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. The real watershed is represented by the nineteenth century, when the second industrial revolution accelerates changes both socially and environmentally: dust as detritus – of industries, of work to build roads and bridges – becomes more and more present, until it becomes a powerful image linked above all to photography and flight, two inventions intimately linked. Literature reflects these new scenarios especially through the science fiction genre and that of the new authors’ fairy tale, which is making its way through writers such as Lewis Carroll and James Matthew Barrie, where a little girl slips into the dusty underground and a little boy is able to fly from his bedroom window, later bestowing this power on others through the intervention of fairy dust. And it is from here, from that handful of dust that a new idea of childhood and (im)possible literature was born.