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Enhancing Creativity
Through Story-Telling
Innovative Training
Programs for
School Settings
Edited by
Alessandro Antonietti
Paola Pizzingrilli · Chiara Valenti
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture
Series Editors
Vlad Petre Glăveanu
Department of Psychology and Counselling
Webster University Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
Brady Wagoner
Communication and Psychology
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
Both creativity and culture are areas that have experienced a rapid
growth in interest in recent years. Moreover, there is a growing interest
today in understanding creativity as a socio-cultural phenomenon and
culture as a transformative, dynamic process. Creativity has traditionally
been considered an exceptional quality that only a few people (truly)
possess, a cognitive or personality trait ‘residing’ inside the mind of the
creative individual. Conversely, culture has often been seen as ‘outside’
the person and described as a set of ‘things’ such as norms, beliefs,
values, objects, and so on. The current literature shows a trend towards
a different understanding, which recognises the psycho-socio-cultural
nature of creative expression and the creative quality of appropriating and
participating in culture. Our new, interdisciplinary series Palgrave Studies
in Creativity and Culture intends to advance our knowledge of both
creativity and cultural studies from the forefront of theory and research
within the emerging cultural psychology of creativity, and the intersection
between psychology, anthropology, sociology, education, business, and
cultural studies. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture is accepting
proposals for monographs, Palgrave Pivots and edited collections that
bring together creativity and culture. The series has a broader focus than
simply the cultural approach to creativity, and is unified by a basic set of
premises about creativity and cultural phenomena.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14640
Alessandro Antonietti · Paola Pizzingrilli ·
Chiara Valenti
Editors
Enhancing Creativity
Through Story-Telling
Innovative Training Programs for School Settings
Editors
Alessandro Antonietti Paola Pizzingrilli
Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
Catholic University of the Sacred Catholic University of the Sacred
Heart Heart
Milan, Italy Milan, Italy
Chiara Valenti
Department of Psychology
Catholic University of the Sacred
Heart
Milan, Italy
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture

ISBN 978-3-030-63012-6 ISBN 978-3-030-63013-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3
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Preface
Since the 50s of the past century, the need to promote creativity in people
has been stressed and many attempts have been made to devise methods,
techniques and procedures to enhance individual and group creativity and
to test the efficacy of such approaches. Educating creativity became one
of the most salient goals of school instruction. The interest towards the
possibility to foster creativity grew up further and nowadays it is still one
of the eminent topics in education. Why is it still important to try to
stimulate creativity?
It is argued that habitual behaviours and thoughts may not be appro-
priate in a world that changes rapidly and where people have to face new
challenges almost on a daily base. New answers to new questions must
be rapidly found. These responses are expected to be faster and more
adequate from creative individuals. Flexibility and imagination should be
the qualities of the leaders of tomorrow. Hence, schools and companies
are expected to prepare young people to develop those skills. Moreover,
creativity seems to be particularly necessary in times of crisis. Because of
the absence of traditional resources and opportunities, escape routes—
which so far were not prefigured—are needed. Thus, it is hoped that
someone may devise new paths, produce new discoveries, identify new
strategies which can open unexpected horizons and allow persons to face
difficulties and impasses, even where no way out can apparently be seen.
A second set of reasons that justify the attention that schools should pay
to creativity is as follows. Often parents, teachers and principals complain
v
vi PREFACE
of poverty of ideas that students show. They complain that behaviours

are conformist and that judgements are aligned to the common way of
thinking and feeling, without any personal reflection. Educating creativity
is proposed as an antidote to this situation. It aims to stimulate a personal
processing of the environmental stimuli so to overcome existing models
and to explore new possibilities. Creativity challenges the individual,
who is asked to ground his/her life on him/herself—on his/her beliefs,
desires, dreams—and get to create something that can then be shared
with others, starting from an internal and original source. Creativity asks
persons to expose and express themselves starting from what characterises
and distinguishes them. The hope is that giving the individual the oppor-
tunity to explain his/her way of seeing, thinking and acting can help
him/her to become aware of his/her potential, so to be an active agent,
but not just a passive observer, of his/her world. This should hopefully
be a way to gain autonomy, independence and security in life.
A third reason supporting the need to promote creativity refers to the
link between creativity and well-being. It is well known that creative abil-
ities are a powerful resource for resilience, i.e. the ability to cope with
challenging situations, even dramatic, so to not only overcome them, but
changing them in opportunities for development and learning. Environ-
mental or historical circumstances of deprivation, or even more simply
limitations or stressful situations, stimulate the ability to devise creative
remedies and expedients or to reinterpret the current condition in a new
way to succeed despite the external adversities. The perception of being
able to cope with heavy situations and being able to play an active role is,
in a proactive and not just reactive perspective, a component of subjective
well-being. This is accompanied by perception of control, sense of agency,
autonomy, adequate self-efficacy and self-esteem, which are aspects that
creativity promotes. In addition, we must not forget the motivating force
that a creativity process requires—as well as the sensations of pleasure
and satisfaction or fulfilment that exerting creativity produces—are further
aspects which increase well-being.
Finally, it has to be kept in mind that creative skills are generally
more enhanced in children and adolescents affected by some neurodevel-
opmental disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Atten-
tion Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or dyslexia (Cancer &
Antonietti, 2019; Cancer, Manzoli, & Antonietti, 2016; Manzoli &
Antonietti, 2016). As a consequence, such skills might be appreci-
ated and stressed to support the self-representation of students with
PREFACE vii
those disorders (and also the representation that parents and educa-
tors have of the students in question) by leading them to recognise
that, despite the deficits associated to the disorder, they have some
potentialities. Further, it is possible to engage them in creative activ-
ities, where they should excel, to motivate them. Rehabilitation activ-
ities can become more interesting for them if presented in a creative
way as well. Cultivating the creative aptitude of these students can
result also in providing them strategies they can apply to address school
works in non-standard manners, which match the way they process
stimuli and reason, so to circumvent the difficulties produced by the
disorder.
Two main approaches can be followed in order to lead people to
learn to be creative (Parnes & Harding, 1972). The first approach orig-
inates from suggestions provided by active pedagogies and, more specif-
ically, by the learning-through-discovery movement. The main purpose
is to arrange learning settings to induce individuals to express personal
ideas, to freely imagine unusual situations, to look for new and not
obvious solutions to problems. Usually no specific materials are devised
for these aims; Educators are generally invited to modify traditional ways
of managing learning activities by paying attention to their attitudes and
communication styles, so to create a climate which facilitates learners’
expressivity and ideational fluency (Barron, 1968). The second approach
consists in employing sets of exercises useful for stimulating creative ways
of thinking. For instance, learners are asked to devise several manners to
use a given tool, to figure out possible ends of an uncompleted tale and to
find alternative linguistic expressions for the situations described. Funny
games, curious experiments and practical trials are employed to stimu-
late creativity, sometimes through the manipulation of concrete materials,
graphical signs and visual patterns.
Six main questionable assumptions seem to be shared by many of the
past attempt to enhance people’s creativity:
1. Creativity consists of a unique mental mechanism. Thus, people can

be trained in such a single mechanism. For instance, a single creative
technique like brainstorming (Osborn, 1957)—one of the well-
known creativity techniques, focused on the free, abundant produc-
tion of bizarre ideas in order to promote innovation-—is proposed
as a general approach for developing creative ideas and skills.
2. Trainees are like a tabula rasa, that is, before being instructed they
know virtually nothing about how to be creative; They are meant as
viii PREFACE
having no ideas or opinions about creative strategies and are not able
to control them. All this has to be “imprinted” into their allegedly
“empty” minds.
3. Even though trainees are instructed with non-ecologically valid
materials (such as puzzles, riddles and so on), the training
programmes can succeed in prompting the subsequent spontaneous
transfer of creative strategies to everyday situations.
4. The development of creative thinking can be induced by simply
asking trainees to perform a specific mental operation a given
number of times. In other words, getting some practice in executing
an operation should be sufficient to allow people to learn it.
5. Creativity is only a matter of cognitive processes. Therefore, trainees
must be taught only to activate particular kinds of cognitive oper-
ations, without any reference to the complex interaction of these
operations with other cognitive processes, emotion, motivation and
the context.
6. Creativity can be promoted as a general ability, without making
reference to specific domains.
Given these assumptions, it is not surprising that the traditional

programmes designed to stimulate creativity often failed to reach their
goals. In fact, ordinary situations where creative thinking is needed
are usually complex situations that involve multiple mental operations.
Furthermore, in everyday life explicit hints to employ the relevant strategy
are seldom given, so that individuals need to be able to identify by
themselves the specific features of the situation in question and choose
the appropriate way to deal with it. Finally, individuals must not only
know how to think creatively, but also must want, namely, be inclined
or motivated to process situations creatively. These remarks stressed the
need for a different approach to promote creativity. More precisely,
various components have to be identified in creativity; More attention
to common reasoning and to complex real-life situations is required; The
role of metacognition in the acquisition of new competencies has to be
highlighted.
On these grounds, in order to produce in trainees a stable aptitude
to think and behave creatively in extra-training contexts, it seems that
educational tools should:
PREFACE ix
1. Develop an integrated structure of various mental mechanisms, each

playing a role in a particular kind of situation or in a particular phase
of the creative process;
2. Use materials that mimic real-life situations or, at least, help trainees
to recognise the relationship between the training tasks and such
situations;
3. Consider individuals’ spontaneous beliefs and tendencies towards
creative thinking and begin teaching from their naïve creative
competencies, with the hope of changing spontaneous beliefs,
tendencies and strategies by means of an internal restructuring
process;
4. Show a metacognitive sensibility, that is, train learners not only to
perform creative strategies, but also to control their execution (for
instance, to select the strategy to be applied and to monitor its
application);
5. Encourage a creative attitude, e.g. encourage learners to accept the
risks and discomforts that creativity involves, to avoid the tendency
to stick to familiar responses and to look for novelty.
Various attempts to integrate cognitive, emotional and personality aspects

of thinking have been made (Antonietti, Colombo & Memmert, 2013).
A constructivist point of view—aimed at substituting the spontaneous
beliefs and tendencies of an individual with new and evolved strategies by
means of an internal restructuring process—is shared by many contempo-
rary creativity programmes. The features of current training materials are
in agreement with the issues discussed previously. First, they induce indi-
viduals to learn a set of reasoning strategies that can result in a creative
way of thinking. Further, they make people aware of the strategies they
employ, of their relevance, of their benefits and costs. In other words,
the programmes should stimulate a metacognitive attitude. They also try
to encourage autonomy in the management of thinking strategies. More-
over, the critical situations where learners are trained to be creative are real
situations or have obvious counterparts in real life. Finally, the application
of a given thinking technique is linked to the development of a corre-
sponding attitude, such as to be open to the experience, to recognise the
emotional states, to look for novelty or to accept contradictions.
Experimental investigations carried out to test the validity of such
training materials generally showed that a larger increase of creativity
x PREFACE
scores is found in the training conditions as compared to the control

conditions. Learning materials are more effective when implemented by
ad hoc instructed educators, who were trained to control their feeling,
attitudes and communication patterns. In general, a clear superiority of
well-structured programmes over simple and isolated tasks emerges. In
particular, highly creative individuals increase their creativity levels only
when a well-structured intervention is carried out by expert trainers
(Antonietti, 1997). In conclusion, people can learn to be creative. Such
learning is possible, however, only if teachers and educators employ
instructional materials that are consistent with the complex nature of
creativity stressed by recent research and that involve learning proce-
dures that are not based simply on repetitive activities. To do so, training
materials should allow learners:
1. To know various creative strategies and the conditions under which

each of them is adequate;
2. To be aware of the mental operation that they are activating in order
to monitor its application;
3. To recognise the attitudes and emotions that accompany the imple-
mentation of a creative strategy and be inclined to adopt such
attitudes and emotions.
The final message that can be drawn from recent investigations is that
a particular learning environment is needed and that creativity requires
a global involvement of individuals, who should be taught to manage
by themselves the mental mechanisms that promote creativity (Gardner,
1991).
In the present books some training programmes devised to enhance
creativity in children and adolescents are described. They are grounded
on a tradition in which attention to the educational aspects of creativity
has been paid (Antonietti & Cornoldi, 2006) and have been designed
in accordance with the assumptions mentioned before and, even if they
were elaborated in different periods and in different circumstances, they
all share the same general theoretical approach. The description of each
training programme includes examples of the materials and activities
included in the programme. In some cases the training programmes have
been also tested in experimental studies, whose findings are summarised
in the book.
PREFACE xi
In the first chapter the theoretical model at the basis of the training
programmes which are reported in the book is explained. The model
tries to synthesise the main theoretical positions about creative thinking
in order to define a coherent framework to be applied in education. Three
general mental operations seem to rely on the basis of creativity: Widening
(W), Connecting (C) and Reorganising (R). W concerns the tendency to
keep an open mind and to deal with a great number of elements. C refers
to the capacity to establish relationships among different elements and
to combine them in unusual ways. R consists of changing the perspec-
tive and inverting relationships among elements. The model of creativity
resulting from the integration of W, C and R is described by reporting
several examples coming from everyday life and from cases of innovation
in the field of arts, science and technology.
In the second chapter two training programmes aimed at increasing the
creative skills inspired to the WCR model and targeting the youngest chil-
dren are described. The first training programme is addressed to kinder-
garten children and to children attending the first years of the primary
school. It is based on a set of short stories whose protagonists are common
objects which can be found at home. The second training programme
is addressed to children attending the last years of the primary school
and consists of four tales. Each tale is framed in a different scenario and
it is divided in episodes corresponding to work units. In both training
programmes activities (verbal, pictorial/graphic and practical) aimed at
developing creative skills are included in some points of the narration.
In the third chapter a structured training programme—addressed to
children aged 4–8 years—consisting of an interactive story in which it
must be discovered why a volcano is extinct is illustrated. In the story
some tutors accompany children in search of the secret of the volcano.
During such a search children meet characters who personify psycho-
logical features which obstacle creativity. Children have to overwhelm
the non-creative aspects of the situations they encounter and to adopt
a productive and innovative perspective. The training programme was
designed to induce children to learn a set of creative strategies and to
stimulate metacognitive skills. It also tries to encourage autonomy in the
management of thinking strategies. Furthermore, the critical situations
where children are trained have obvious counterparts in common life.
Finally, the application of a given thinking technique is linked to the
development of the corresponding attitude. The program has been tested
in two studies involving, respectively, 300 4 to 6-year olds and 900 4
xii PREFACE
to 8-year olds. There was evidence that classes engaged in the program
resulted in a significant higher test-retest increase of the creativity scores
as compared to control classes. Besides these quantitative results, teachers
who applied the training programme reported modifications of children’s
behaviour and attitudes in other school tasks.
The fourth chapter is about a more recent training programme
designed to be implemented in primary and secondary school (a distinct
version is available for each school level). Each version includes two
different kinds of training: the metacognitive approach and the symbolic-
imaginative approach. Both approaches have the same narrative plot, but
they present two different styles: It is more structured in the metacogni-
tive approach and more provocative in the symbolic-imaginative approach.
The episodes of the training programme are about some students who
have to deal with situations of both scholastic and personal life. The main
characters present some stereotypical features that help students to iden-
tify themselves with them. Furthermore, each character shows resources
and limits. The focus is on positive and negative aspects that every
person/situation has. Each training activity included in the story is not
separated from the curriculum, but actually it refers to some scholastic-
related contents that can be dealt by the teacher in the class. With refer-
ence to the first approach, the aim is to develop a metacognitive-reflexive
attitude in students so to help them to generate self-awareness acts and
remarks about different aspects of their mental functioning. Self-awareness
acts can be produced in three different temporal moments: before an
action, during it or at the end of it. These acts are about different aspects:
strategies, resources, difficulties, processes and individual/personal expe-
rience. The three creative operations of the WCR model are empow-
ered with activities put on three different levels: modelling (a model is
presented; It can motivate, invite to the personal assimilation, suggest
transformation prompts), research (a problem-solving request is proposed
that stimulates individuals to find unconventional answers) and inter-
rogation (the generation and the discovery of questions is stimulated).
Each episode of the training presents, in some points, different activi-
ties focused on a creative operation. After each activity, some metacog-
nitive stimuli are presented: They invite to reflect on previous activities,
on observed difficulties, on the possibility to improve the process. The
symbolic-imaginative approach is less structured than the metacognitive
one. In this case, there are not activities to be carried out, but the narra-
tion is interrupted by “evocative stimuli” in some points. They provide
PREFACE xiii
indications about how to use creativity empowerment tools that acti-

vate imaginative, identification and transformative skills. They consist of
suggestions about the use of creative mental operations in order to favour
a symbolic and emotive approach. The symbolic process has a circular
structure and it involves two principal lines: symbolisation of reality (the
internal self generates the external reality) and exposition to symbolisa-
tion (the external reality evocates the internal self). The whole training
programme has been tested in a large-scale study which involved about
400 students in Sicily and in other small-scale studies carried in different
regions of Italy.
The book is addressed to researchers interested to learn about new
approaches to train creativity skills and to know which empirical find-
ings support the validity of the proposed programmes. Hence, a goal of
the book is to contribute to disseminating updated notions about the
enhancement of creativity. The book is addressed to professionals as well,
for instance, teachers and educators who are interested in knowing what
practical activities can be implemented in their work setting if they should
increase the level of children’s and adolescents’ creativity.
Milano, Italy Alessandro Antonietti

Paola Pizzingrilli
Chiara Valenti
References
Antonietti, A. (1997). Unlocking creativity. Educational Leadership, 54 (6), 73–
75.
Antonietti, A., Colombo, B., & Memmert, D. (Eds.) (2013). Psychology of
creativity: Advances in theory, research and application. Hauppauge, NY: Nova
Science Publishers.
Antonietti, A., & Cornoldi, C. (2006). Creativity in Italy. In J. Kaufman & R.
J. Sternberg (Eds.), International handbook of creativity (pp. 124–166). New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Barron, F. (1968). Creativity and personal freedom. Princeton: Van Nostrand.
Cancer, A., & Antonietti, A. (2019). Creativity and dyslexia: Theoretical insights
and empirical evidence supporting a possible link. In S. Kreitler (Ed.),
New frontiers in creativity (pp. 125–148). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science
Publishers.
xiv PREFACE
Cancer, A., Manzoli, S., & Antonietti, A. (2016). The alleged link between
creativity and dyslexia: Identifying the specific process in which dyslexic
students excel. Cogent Psychology, 3, article 1190309, 1–13. 10.1080/233
11908.2016.1190309.
Gardner, H. (1991). To open minds. New York: Basic Books.
Manzoli, S., & Antonietti, A. (2016). Gli studenti con dislessia sono creativi?
Uno studio nella scuola secondaria di primo grado. Psicologia Clinica dello
Sviluppo, 20, 121–134.
Osborn, A. F. (1957). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative
thinking. New York: Scribner.
Parnes, S. J., & Harding, H. F. (Eds.) (1972). A source book for creative thinking.
New York: Scribner.
Contents
1 The Mechanisms of Creative Thinking 1

Alessandro Antonietti, Barbara Colombo,
and Paola Pizzingrilli
1.1 Three Main Theoretical Perspectives 2
1.2 Widening 5
1.3 Connecting 7
1.4 Reorganising 9
1.5 Conclusions 12
References 13
2 Short Stories for High Goals: The “Creativity

in the Classroom” Programmes 15
Chiara Valenti and Alessandro Antonietti
2.1 The Training Programme “Creativity in Classroom 1” 16
2.1.1 Outline of the Training Programme 16
2.1.2 The Creative Activities 17
2.1.3 The Training Programme as an Assessment Tool 17
2.1.4 The Training Programme and the Curriculum 18
2.1.5 An Example of the Stories 19
2.1.6 Assessment Sheets 24
2.2 The Training Programme “Creativity in Classroom 2” 33
2.2.1 Outline of the Training Programme 33
2.2.2 The Training as an Assessment Tool 34
xv
xvi CONTENTS
2.2.3 An Example of the Adventures 35

2.3 Conclusions 44
References 45
3 In Search of the Volcano’s Secret: The “Programme

to Develop Children’s Creativity” 47
Alessandro Antonietti and Luciano Cerioli
3.1 Assumptions Underlying the Training Programme 48
3.2 Outline of the Training Programme 49
3.3 Examples of the Story 51
3.4 Testing the Efficacy of CCDP 63
3.5 Conclusions 65
References 67
4 A Special School Year: The Programme “Developing

Flexible Thinking” 69
Alessandro Antonietti, Luciano Cerioli, Paola Pizzingrilli,
and Chiara Valenti
4.1 Supporting Creativity Using Metacognition
and Symbolic-Imaginative Thinking 71
4.2 Outline of the Training Programme 72
4.2.1 The Approach 72
4.2.2 The Episodes 72
4.3 Two Approaches to Foster Creativity 74
4.3.1 The Metacognitive Approach 75
4.3.2 The Symbolic Approach 79
4.4 An Example of the Episodes 80
4.5 Testing the Training Programme 84
4.5.1 The Objectives of the Project 84
4.5.2 Methods 85
4.5.3 Results 87
4.6 Conclusions 90
4.7 General Overview 92
References 95
Index 97
Notes on Contributors
Alessandro Antonietti he is full professor of psychology at the Catholic

University of the Sacred Heart, where he is director of the Research
Center for Vocational Guidance and Career Development and of the
Service of Learning and Educational Psychology. His research interests
concern the enhancement and rehabilitation of cognitive functions and
life skills both in children and adults.
Luciano Cerioli he is an educational and clinical psychologist.
He collaborated with the University of Milano Bicocca, Catholic Univer-
sity of the Sacred Heart, Politecnico, and Accademia delle Belle Arti di
Brera in Milan.
Barbara Colombo she is associate professor of psychology at Cham-
plain College, where she is also the chair of the Neuroscience Lab. Her
research interests focus on the assessment and empowerment of cogni-
tive skills (creative thinking, decision making, problem solving), as well as
the use on non-invasive brain stimulation to promote neurorehabilitation,
emotion regulation, and well-being.
Paola Pizzingrilli she got her Ph.D. in Psychology at the Catholic
University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. Her research interest focused
on the creation of instruments and training programmes aimed at investi-
gating and fostering children’s creativity. She is currently employed at the
Career Service of the same University, Research and Development Area.
xvii
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Chiara Valenti she is psychologist and psychotherapist in training. She

is specialized in Learning Disabilities and ADHD. Her research inter-
ests are related to the field of general psychology. She built and validated
different assessment and empowerment training tools related to children’
and adolescents’ socio-cognitive skills, above all creativity.
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 An example of combination of shapes 20

Fig. 2.2 Example of shapes to be employed in a picture
combination task 21
Fig. 2.3 Materials of the task requiring to compose a square 22
Fig. 2.4 Examples of the cartoon recombination task 23
Fig. 2.5a The necklace problem: the outcome to be achieved 24
Fig. 2.5b The necklace problem: the starting, incorrect situation 24
Fig. 2.6a The hidden faces task: the staring picture 37
Fig. 2.6b The hidden faces task: the solution 38
Fig. 2.7a The hidden master task: the starting picture 43
Fig. 2.7b The hidden master task: the solution 44
Fig. 3.1 The drawing as it appears at the beginning 53
Fig. 3.2 The drawing after the first change 54
Fig. 3.3 The pets-tutors 59
Fig. 4.1 Total WCR mean scores before and after the training
considering the typology of training as between-subject
variable 88
Fig. 4.2 Total WCR mean scores before and after the training
considering the school level as between-subject variable 89
Fig. 4.3 Widening subtest mean scores before and after the training
considering the typology of training as between-subject
variable 90
Fig. 4.4 Widening subtest mean scores before and after the training
considering the school level as between-subject variable 91
xix
xx LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 4.5 Connecting subtest mean scores before and after

the training considering the typology of training as
between-subject variable 92
Fig. 4.6 Connecting subtest mean scores before and after the
training considering the school level as between-subject
variable 93
Fig. 4.7 Reorganising subtest mean scores before and after
the training considering the typology of training as
between-subject variable 94
Fig. 4.8 Reorganising subtest mean scores before and after the
training considering the school level as between-subject
variable 95
List of Tables
Table 4.1 The main characters of the training programme 73

Table 4.2 Schematic representation of self-awareness acts
before in three temporal moments 76
Table 4.3 Evocative stimuli included in Episode 3 80
Table 4.4 Number of students and age according to school levels
and experimental conditions 85
Table 4.5 The basis of the WCR test 86
xxi
CHAPTER 1
The Mechanisms of Creative Thinking
Alessandro Antonietti, Barbara Colombo,

and Paola Pizzingrilli
Abstract The theoretical model at the basis of the training programmes

which are described in the book is explained. The model tries to synthe-
sise the main theoretical positions about creative thinking in order to
define a coherent framework to be applied in education. Three general
mental operations seem to rely on the basis of creativity: widening (W),
connecting (C) and reorganising (R). W concerns the tendency to keep
an open mind and to deal with a great number of elements. C refers
to the capacity to establish relationships among different elements and
to combine them in unusual ways. R consists of changing the perspec-
tive and inverting relationships among elements. The model of creativity
resulting from the integration of W, C and R is described by reporting
A. Antonietti · P. Pizzingrilli
Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy
e-mail: alessandro.antonietti@unicatt.it
P. Pizzingrilli
e-mail: paola.pizzingrilli@unicatt.it
B. Colombo (B)
Champlain College, Burlington, VT, USA
e-mail: bcolombo@champlain.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1

A. Antonietti et al. (eds.), Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling,
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3_1
2 A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.
examples coming from everyday life and from cases of innovation in the
field of arts, science and technology.
Keywords Creativity · Divergent thinking · Productive thinking ·

Fluency · Flexibility · Originality · Remote associations · Combination ·
Restructuring · Insight
1.1 Three Main Theoretical Perspectives

The perspective according to which creativity concerns primarily the
production of abundant and diverse ideas still survives. Starting from
Guilford (1950), and according to the Factorialistic perspective, creativity
is linked to the ability to produce many ideas from a stimulus. This
ability is characterised by the richness of the thinking flow and the
ability to follow new directions in order to achieve uncommon and orig-
inal outcomes. The generation of fluid, flexible and original ideas often
comes from changing existing ideas (Perkins, 1988; Simonton, 1999;
Weisberg, 1993): By analysing scientific discoveries, technological inno-
vations and artistic masterpieces, it was found that they usually originated
from existing ideas that have been modified through gradual adjust-
ments to fit the specific problem or goal the creator had in mind. In
fact, information that people gradually obtain while testing solutions that
progressively come to their mind by trying to solve a problem leads them
to change the direction of their reasoning. Not all changes, however, lead
to something useful and valuable. Proposed changes have to be selected.
The creative process, hence, becomes similar to the evolution process
(Campbell, 1960), which is determined by the generation of variations
of the characteristics of existing species. The selection of these variations
leads to the maintaining of those that provide greater survival capacity
(Johnson-Laird, 1998).
Secondly, associationism is also a resistant conception of creativity.
From this perspective, the production of creative ideas would be achieved
through the unusual combination of known ideas. Bizarre associations
often led scientists and artists to mature brilliant insights. Vygotsky
(1932) was one of the first authors who proposed a conception of
creativity based on the idea of “association”. According to Vygotsky,
1 THE MECHANISMS OF CREATIVE THINKING 3
creative activity consists of the recombination and processing of informa-

tion already known or previously acquired, which leads to the production
of new realities. Mednick (1962) argued that creativity can be identi-
fied by the ability to connect ideas which are distant from each other.
According to him, creativity is the ability to combine, in a new and
unusual way, disparate elements that apparently have little in common.
This perspective has been renewed by Koestler (1964) under the concept
of bisociation: The creative act consists of bringing together two struc-
tures of reasoning usually considered incompatible or to find similarities
between different fields of knowledge. Innovative thinking would be
implemented when two independent ways of reasoning come to an
intersection, producing something that did not previously exist. The
assumption that creativity derives from the association of elements usually
considered as unrelated is also present in more recent theories. For
example, Rothenberg (1979) identified creativity with Janusian thinking
(a name derived from Janus, the ancient Roman goddess having two
faces looking at opposite directions). This form of thinking allows one
to combine the terms of an antithesis, that is, to simultaneously keep
in mind two opposing elements and to attempt their integration. The
creative person, therefore, will be able to combine two different elements
and to make antagonistic elements coexist in the same line of thought.
This aspect of creativity is stressed in the Geneplore model (Smith, Ward,
& Finke, 1995), according to which original and innovative outcomes
can result by a process in two phases: the generative phase, in which an
individual constructs mental representations, and the exploration phase,
in which these representations are interpreted in order to lead them to
suggest creative discoveries. In the generative phase, the representation
results as a consequence of an associative process through which elements
are combined together.
Thirdly, some of the suggestions derived from the Gestalt tradition
have been used to define an “updated” concept of insight . Gestalt
psychologists did not generally use the word “creativity”, even if they
dealt with acts of thought that produced discoveries and inventions. What
is commonly meant by “creativity” refers to what Gestalt psychologists
called productive thinking , which, as Wertheimer (1959) claimed, allows
individuals to identify new properties of the given elements, which are
then conceived and used in new or different roles or perspectives. This
implements a restructuring act, which represents: (a) the transforma-
tion of the point of view from which the situation is analysed; (b) the
reorganisation of available informational data; (c) the discovery of new

relationships and (d) the identification of new functions of the available
material.
Gruber and Davis (1988) pointed out that not all innovations and
discoveries must necessarily proceed from a sudden reorganisation of
the conceptual field. For example, Gruber (1974), by reconstructing
the development of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, emphasised the pres-
ence of slow and incremental changes in the theoretical system that the
British naturalist was gradually formulating. Schank (1988) also main-
tained that some sort of restructuring is at the basis of creativity. This
author suggested that to understand reality we must have specific knowl-
edge structures. A knowledge structure used several times to explain an
event constitutes a pattern of explanation. Facing a stimulus, the most
economical strategy is to treat it as something familiar, namely, trying to
apply a pattern of explanation which refers to other known situations.
Creativity emerges with new situations. In this case people can apply an
“unexpected” pattern of explanation. The creative process comes from
a deliberate misapplication of an explanation pattern: Facing an event, a
person does not apply the usual pattern of explanation for it but tries a
completely different pattern.
Is it possible to find a way to synthesise those different positions, in
order to define a coherent framework to conceptualise creativity and to
inspire attempts to educate creativity? Apart from the specific aspects that
characterise each theory, we can identify three major mental operations,
which appear to be the basis of creativity.
The first group of authors fundamentally claims that creativity comes
from the widening of the mental field. If the individual is capable of
producing many different and unusual ideas (Guilford), if the individual
takes something that exists and tries to change it (Perkins, Simonton,
Weisberg), if the individual generates different solutions in order to iden-
tify at least one surviving evaluation (Campbell, Johnson-Laird), the
individual will discover many mental elements, increasing the probability
of finding among them one that could lead to something new and valu-
able. Hence, expanding the mental horizon through the discovery or
invention of new elements contributes to creativity.
The second group of authors recognises, however, that creativity
emerges when people establish a relationship between realities which are
very different from each other (Vygotsky, Mednick, Koestler) or even
opposite (Rothenberg). According to this perspective, connecting mental
fields usually considered remote, and possibly antithetical, is the basic

process of creativity.
Finally, the third group of authors thinks that a creative act occurs
when there is a reorganisation of the mental field. This can happen
through restructuring (Wertheimer and Gruber) or through the appli-
cation of an interpretive scheme that usually applies to other situations
but that, when applied to the present one for which it is not the conven-
tional scheme, produces a new vision in which it is possible to grasp not
obvious and interesting meanings (Schank).
The WCR model of creativity (Antonietti & Colombo, 2013, 2016;
Antonietti, Colombo, & Pizzingrilli, 2011) tries to integrate these
operations—Widening (W), Connecting (C) and Reorganising (R)—to
help teachers and trainers design interventions which can enhance each
different aspect of creativity. Widening concerns the tendency to keep an
open mind, to be aware of the great number of elements that can be iden-
tified in a given situation, to recognise possible, not obvious, meanings, to
discover hidden aspects and to overcome apparent constraints. Connecting
refers to the capacity to establish reciprocal relationships among different
elements, to draw analogies between remote things, to combine ideas in
odd ways and to synthesise the multiplicity of disparate elements into
an overall structure. Reorganising consists of changing the perspective,
assuming a different point of view, seeing things by inverting relation-
ships between their elements, asking original questions and imagining
what should happen if unusual conditions occurred.
1.2 Widening
The first mechanism that we see operating in creative thinking consists
of coming out from the limited conceptual framework within which
people spontaneously pigeonhole situations and breaking all the “thinking
bonds” that often restrain them. To produce something new and original,
it is important to move in a wider mental field that will mobilise ideas and
lead to new directions of thinking, helping to find new opportunities and
new meanings.
A good example is related to marketing. For decades, manufacturers
of tennis rackets were bound to a standard shape and size, when actu-
ally no regulation prevented the use of different rackets. Breaking this
implicit constraint, the owner of a sporting goods company successfully
launched onto the market the “big racket”, a tennis racket with a wider
than usual tailpiece. A tennis racket with this shape and this size offers
several advantages over traditional rackets: First, beginners are more likely
to intercept the ball; Second, a larger tailpiece allows tennis players to give
more strength to the shot; Finally, the effects of the return stroke on the
elbow ligaments are lower. The designer of this “big racket” expanded the
field of mind, acknowledging that tools with better and different features
could be produced.
This link between creativity and breadth of the mind field within
which people move can be found in early childhood. For example, when
faced with disconnected data, individuals enact categorisation strategies
in order to gather more data within the same class. In such situations
it is possible to stress individual differences. On the one hand, there are
those (broad categorisers) who tend to form broad categories; On the
other hand there are those (narrow categorisers) who tend to make a lot
of subtle discriminations among data and gather them under the same
class only on the basis of close similarities. A positive correlation between
broad categorisation and creativity has been proven. In fact, broad cate-
gorisers—as happens with creative individuals—are prepared to process
large amounts of information, not based—as happens with narrow cate-
gorisers—on well-structured principles, and proceed by changing their
own thought patterns and integrating new ideas in a quickly changing
mental organisation (Wallach & Kogan, 1965).
A situation similar to that previously described and likely to bring out
individual differences in “style” of thought is made up of a task of concep-
tualisation in which, faced with fifty images of everyday objects, people
have to group them into classes and justify their choices. In this task
subjects may adopt different criteria. There is, first of all, who classifies
objects on the basis of analytical-descriptive criteria, that is, based on phys-
ical characteristics and perceptual aspects. Then there are those who sort
objects based on categorical-inferential criteria, that is, based on the fact
that certain objects are all examples of a given concept (for example,
the objects “fork”, “glass” and “cup” are grouped into as members of
the category “dish”). Finally, there are those who divide the objects on
the basis of relational-thematic criteria, inserting objects into broad cate-
gories (for example, the objects “comb”, “clock”, “port” and “lipstick”
are grouped as representatives of the concept “ready to go out”) (Kogan,
1974). It is observed that individuals with high intelligence and low
creativity prefer the categorical-inferential criteria and shun the thematic
relationships, whereas individuals with low intelligence and high creativity

employ the relational-thematic criteria but not the categorial inferential.
1.3 Connecting
We consider now the second creative mechanism, namely, the mental
operation which leads one to link together apparently disparate realities.
Why do unusual associations support creativity?
Sometimes not trivial or bizarre associations have led scientists and
artists to mature brilliant insights. For example, Wilhelm Röntgen, while
investigating the properties of cathode rays, discovered, almost by chance,
that, on a screen near the table on which he was conducting his
experiments, a green luminescence was produced. He associated this
phenomenon to the rays he was studying and, carrying out specific
experiments in this new direction, discovered the existence of X-rays.
Similarly, Alexander Fleming, while studying cultures of bacteria, noticed
that one of these cultures, carelessly exposed to air, had been destroyed.
He associated the exposure to the death of the bacteria—two factors with
apparently nothing in common—and came, on the basis of this insight, to
the discovery of penicillin. Darwin reported that the insight that led him
to develop the theory of evolution was prompted by the reading of an
essay of demography and economics written by Malthus and from having
established a connection between the dynamics governing the growth of
human populations and those of the animal world.
These cases of scientific findings suggest that establishing a link
between aspects of reality that we usually separate can lead to identifying
useful hidden similarities. This is also true of technical discoveries. For
example, Leonardo da Vinci designed a system to automatically move a
rotisserie, establishing a connection between the instrument itself and an
environmental element that had nothing to do with it. When we cook
a dish stuck on the spit over the fire, it produces smoke. Would it not
be possible to establish a link between smoke and spit? If the smoke is
conveyed in a hood at the end of which is placed a windmill, the smoke,
going up, will set it in motion. Such bloodstream motion of the whirlwind
can be transmitted, with appropriate couplings, to rotate the spit without
any human intervention. In a similar way, Henry Ford was able to reduce
the production cost of the Model T, an innovative car that was launched
on the market, demanding that the goods supplied to the factories were
packed in boxes of a defined size and with the screw holes made in specific
locations. The walls of the boxes were actually used, being designed with
the right dimensions, as the floors of the cars that were built in the factory.
The ingenious idea was to establish a relationship between two elements
usually conceived as distinct: packaging material and the product inside
the package.
A particular case of combination is analogy, which consists in transfer-
ring what is known in a familiar domain to a different, possibly new or
unfamiliar, domain. Analogies suggested discoveries and inventions. For
example, technologies for the operation of radar devices were inspired
by the mechanism of emission and reception of ultrasound by bats. The
current research aimed at improving the systems for humidification of the
passenger compartments of cars are inspired by studies on the anatomical
structure of the nose of the camel. To design a roof that was white to
repel heat in summer and dark in winter to absorb heat, the behaviour
of the scales of a fish in particular situations suggested a stratagem to
achieve this. The flounder, when swimming in the water, takes on the
colour of the surrounding environment. This happens thanks to the
chromatophores, vesicles of dark pigment that is retained when pressure
exerted on the skin of the animal is not high (as happens when the fish is
near the surface of the water) and is released when the pressure is high (as
happens when the fish swims deep), so allowing the fish to be indistin-
guible from its surroundings. This phenomenon suggested the idea of
building a roof completely covered with black plastic small white spheres.
These beads were dilated with the heat making the roof lighter, while the
cold would be restricted, making the roof darker.
Also the ability to combine ideas thanks to analogies is connected to
cognitive style. Field-independence, as shown by investigating individual
differences in analogical reasoning (Antonietti & Gioletta, 1995), is one
of the personality traits related to the connecting phase of problem solving
by analogy: Mapping the solution strategy embedded in a familiar situa-
tion onto a novel problem, so as to integrate two different frameworks,
is more likely to occur in field-independent than in field-dependent indi-
viduals. Consistently, creativity can be increased by stimulating people to
look beyond the immediate cognitive field and to perceive the opportu-
nities which are at hand in other fields. In fact, training students to make
analogies is a successful way to enhance creativity (Antonietti, 2001).
1.4 Reorganising
If we were asked to determine the volume of a ball, we could use our
school memories trying to recall the formula to calculate the volume of
the sphere. But if we were required to determine the volume of an irreg-
ular solid (e.g. a small rock), there would be no formula or past experience
that could help us. Instead, we might think to immerse the rock in a grad-
uated jug, partially filled with water, and measure the resulting increase
in the level of the liquid. The increase corresponds to the volume of the
dipped rock. In this case the success is caused by setting the problem
in different terms: not related to formulas, but as a practical-operational
problem. Assuming a new perspective allows us to find an original and
effective response. Another example: If I want to help a depressed friend,
rather than following the obvious path and trying to comfort him, I could
reverse the relationship, pretending to be the one needing help. Reversing
the roles—in order to help my friend, the one in need, I ask him to help
me—can, in some circumstances, lead to solution.
Also a historical case can be relevant, particularly relating to the Thirty
Years’ War. The Spanish army had defeated the French and was spreading
out into French territory, destroying villages and raging on the popula-
tion. A small village received the news of the arrival of the Spanish army
and people gathered to decide what they could do to defend themselves.
It was clear that trying to oppose the enemy troops with barricades would
be futile, given the disproportion between the number of attackers and
the villagers. Hence, the men of the village decided to do just the oppo-
site of what people would expect: Rather than trying to resist the enemy
and defend their home and family, they escaped, leaving in the village only
children and women. This reversal of attitude—to leave their loved ones
and their properties rather than defend them—proved to be a winning
solution. When the Spanish army reached the village, they entered it
without a fight. If the soldiers had fought, they would then have had
the “right” to persecute the losers, but since they not have “earned” the
looting right, according to their military code they would had been men
without honour if they used violence without having to fight for this right.
Hence, the Spanish army passed over, respecting the people and proper-
ties in the village. As a more recent case, we can remind that during the
Second World War, when Nazi occupied Denmark, they wanted to impose
the obligation in that country for Jews to wear the armband with the Star
of David. The Danish king did not agree, but he had no power to oppose
this law. Forced, he signed the requirement to bring this despicable badge
of distinction, but he first began to wear the armband. In this case, it was
impossible for him to do what he wanted to do (not signing the edict).
Thus, he made the opposite. The king, instead of opposing to what the
German occupiers forced him, conformed more than was required. In
doing so, he found a decent way out of a situation that looked like a dead
end. He expressed his opposition against the measure and his solidarity
with the Jewish population and thus emptied it of its meaning as a symbol
of disgrace. In fact, if the king was wearing the armband—the population
thought—it was not so humiliating to wear it.
Perspective reversal is a mechanism that we find at the basis of another
of Leonardo’s inventions. For example, the conception of the cochlea,
a tool designed to bring water from one level to the next, involves the
mental operation we are discussing. The main aim of this instrument is to
bring water upwards; But, to do that, it operates in the opposite direction,
actually going down. The spiral wrapped around the rotating cone, “pen-
etrates” the water tank placed in the lower level. Part of the water enters
the first segment of the spiral. The rotary motion leads this segment at
the top and the water contained in it falls down into the next loop, which,
with the next rotation, finds itself at the top and so the water, lap after
lap, reaches the exit at the top.
The restructuring act appears to be the core of what De Bono (1967)
calls lateral thinking . Lateral thinking is opposed to vertical thinking.
The latter consists in the application of rigid reasoning patterns related to
consolidated habits, routines and previous experience. It is characterised
by sequential and systematic processing procedures in which the various
steps are connected one another on the basis of logical links. Vertical
thinking may be associated to the image of the ascent of a staircase (where
each step rests on the previous one) or to the construction of a tower by
means of the superposition of many cubes. In contrast, lateral thinking
moves from one pattern of reasoning to another one and induces people
to look at problems in new ways, to follow directions not explored previ-
ously and not usually considered to overcome the obstacles, to examine
all alternative forms of reasoning. On other occasions De Bono has desig-
nated lateral thinking by using expressions such PO thinking (PO comes
from suppPOse, POssible, hyPOthesise, words that suggest exploration
and search) as opposed to the YES-NO thinking (logical thinking, crit-
ical and dogmatic) (De Bono, 1972, 1973), the water-logic (based on
perception, intuition, flexibility) as opposed to the rock-logic (based on

the rigidity of the opposition) (De Bono, 1990).
Reorganising can be facilitated by hinting to students at simulating
mentally how it is possible to transform given situations. Visual images
can be especially helpful to do this (Antonietti, 1999; Antonietti, Cerana,
& Scafidi, 1994). Several autobiographical reports suggest a significant
contribution to mental image in scientific creativity (Shepard, 1978). For
example, the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard confessed that
when he thought of algebraic problems, made use of visual representa-
tions that was building in his mind. Hadamard used these mental images
especially when the problems became too complex, so the visual coding
was the only one allowed to have a simultaneous understanding of all
elements of the problem. A physicist who made extensive use of visual
images to solve theoretical problems when it was committed was Einstein.
For example, he reported having had the first suggestion that led to the
subsequent processing of the special theory of relativity at the age of
sixteen, when he imagined himself to travel at the speed of light sitting
in the front end of a light beam with a mirror before him. In this scene
happened that on the mirror you could ever reflect the image of the trav-
eller. The light and the mirror, in fact, are travelling in the same direction
and at the same speed, so that the mirror was always a little ahead of the
beam and the latter could not reach the mirror. From this visual scene
Einstein concluded that there can be no observer (i.e. no body) that can
reach or exceed the speed of light. A particularly common use of mental
images in the process of the invention was made by Nikola Tesla, inventor
of the neon lights and self-induced engine-start. He in fact usually devel-
oped his own projects using imaginary mechanical models which worked
mentally for a few weeks in order to determine what parts were subject
to premature wear.
For what reasons can mental images foster creativity? According to
Kosslyn (1983) mental images play a facilitator role in thought processes
as a means of simulation and symbolisation. As a simulation tool, images
allow people to anticipate mentally the actual operations and phys-
ical transformations thanks to an internal representation that maintains
correspondence with the analog world outside. As instruments of symbol-
isation, mental images of concrete objects or events can be replaced by
conventional signs. In the first case mental images are useful because they
offer the opportunity to view some consequences of the situation that
the abstract representation does not make it immediately apparent. In the
second case imagery would help the subject to mentally manipulate the
elements of the situation, encouraging the design of the structure of the
situation and allowing a smooth and rapid transformation of the elements.
With more specific reference to creativity, reorganisation is facilitated by
images which are sensitive to structural symmetries and organisations. The
images allow individuals to transform data so that the changes which are
to be produced in reality can be simulated more flexibly in mind. Finally,
images allow people to reorganise the way in which one represents a situ-
ation so that it can be reconsidered more productive. In short, the mental
representation of information in visual form work can facilitate reorganisa-
tion by providing a pictorial support to abstract concepts, keeping various
elements of the situation simultaneously present within a single scenario,
encouraging a comprehensive view of the situation, supporting the iden-
tification of relationships between data. In short, mental imagery would
promote creative thinking since it is a kind of representation which is very
flexible and easily transformable (Antonietti, 1991).
1.5 Conclusions
The present chapter proposed an integrated view of creativity by high-
lighting that three main mental operations—Widening, Combining and
Reorganising—can be meant as the core mechanisms of creative thinking.
The WCR model can be meant as a basis to devise instruments to assess
creativity skills. Such tools are useful in educational settings to evaluate
students’ creativity levels and possible increases depending on age and/or
instructions.
The WCR model was also conceived as a framework to devise inter-
ventions to train creative thinking. It is possible to design training
programmes which stimulate mental dynamics in students that favour the
emergence of streams of thought which are rich, varied and original and
to provide teachers and educators precise suggestions about the manner
in which this can be done.
Research showed that an “open” style of interaction is not always the
best option to promote the development of the cognitive components of
creativity. Instead, structured activities specifically aimed at this goal are
needed. In order for them to be successful, the structured nature of such
programmes requires part of the activities to be run in a “steering” way.
Hence, a conduction marked by excessive freedom and acceptance—such
as those implemented by the “open” teachers—would be to not allow the

educational occasions potentially provided by the training programmes to
be fully exploited. This stresses the need that the attempts to enhance
creativity should include precise exercises and instructions, as the training
programmes which will be described in the next chapters do.
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CHAPTER 2
Short Stories for High Goals: The “Creativity

in the Classroom” Programmes
Chiara Valenti and Alessandro Antonietti
Abstract Two training programmes aimed at increasing the creative skills

coherent with the WCR model are described. The first programme is
addressed to kindergarten children and to children attending the first
years of the primary school. It is based on a set of short stories whose
protagonists are common objects which can be found at home. The
second programme is addressed to children attending the last years of the
primary school and consists of four tales. Each tale is framed in a different
scenario (Ancient Egypt, Middle Age and so on). Each scenario is divided
in episodes corresponding to work units. In both programmes activities
(verbal, pictorial/graphic and practical) aimed at developing creative skills
are included in some points of the narration.
C. Valenti (B) · A. Antonietti

Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy
e-mail: chiara.valenti@unicatt.it
A. Antonietti
e-mail: alessandro.antonietti@unicatt.it
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 15

A. Antonietti et al. (eds.), Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling,
Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3_2
16 C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI
Keywords Creativity · Creative training · Creativity testing · Fluidity ·

Flexibility · Originality
2.1 The Training Programme

“Creativity in Classroom 1”
2.1.1 Outline of the Training Programme
The training programme “Creativity in classroom 1” (Antonietti &
Armellin, 1999) is a collection of small stories, so that each can be read
within a single work session. This should allow an easy use of the tool
in the context of a modular organisation of school activities where the
teacher sometimes finds himself/herself having short times of interaction
with the pupils.
Although distinct, the stories revolve around the same environment
(the domestic context) and have household objects as protagonists. The
choice of this scenario and the characters, indeed a little unusual, responds
to the idea of leading the child to discover that fantasy is not a world
inhabited only by elves, fairies, magicians, and so on. Even at home,
among everyday objects, it is possible to imagine stories no less extrava-
gant than those that traditional fantasy sets in forests, castles or realms of a
distant past. This seemed a first useful element to feed the child’s curiosity
and ability to go beyond the opaque and prosaic aspects of reality, to
guess other meanings and to find questions where apparently there are
only artefacts to use.
Furthermore, the narrative stories present a moral intent as well. In
particular, in some of them a sort of “technological” ethics is presented,
aimed at suggesting that principles and values (such as friendship, soli-
darity and respect for others), which can guarantee a good coexistence
between people, are reflected also in the action of mechanical and elec-
trical appliances. Finally, the stories present a “didactic” purpose; Actually,
they are also aimed at explaining, in terms understandable for a child, the
functioning of some household objects.
2 SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS … 17
2.1.2 The Creative Activities

In some points of the stories there are numbered references that recall
the creative activities; They represent the operative parts of the training
programme. These exercises are described in the pages that follow each
story. Generally, they are descriptions provided in a summary form: The
aim is to envisage ways of working rather than offering rigid “instruc-
tions for use”. In any case, the teacher can vary and enrich the activity
or adapt it to the contingent school situation. Likewise, the teacher will
be able to contextualise the exercise, linking it to other elements of the
curriculum, accompanying it with premises, developments, and resump-
tions. Generally the activities offer the opportunity to insert clarifications
and explanations, to be accompanied by other exercises (dramatising the
episodes, drawing the environments and the characters, etc.) and to be
completed by further elaborations (telling personal experiences, referring
to daily cases, discussing the “moral” of the story, etc.).
Each activity is accompanied by an abbreviation which refers to the
type of creative process that is most involved in it. Four main aspects
that distinguish creativity have been identified: free production of ideas
[PRO], combination of elements [COM], search for similarities [SIM]
and change of point of view [POW]. The teacher can freely decide what
activities to present to children and whether to interrupt the story at the
marked point or to propose the operative parts at the end of the story.
These aspects easily recall the different operations of WCR Model
(Antonietti, Colombo, & Pizzingrilli, 2011). The production of ideas
[PRO] is similar to Widening operation, because it allows children to
create a lot of different ideas in order to find new interesting intuitions.
Combination of elements [COM] and search for similarities [SIM] corre-
spond to Connecting operation because, respectively, allows pupils to
find unusual links between different aspects of reality and to discover
strange similarities between objects that do not seem to have anything
in common. Change of point of view [POV] corresponds to a central
point of Reorganising operation that allows people to see situations and
reality from different perspectives and points of view.
2.1.3 The Training Programme as an Assessment Tool

The training programme can be used for the purpose of stimulating
creativity, carrying out the activities mentioned above. It can be used as,
or even as, a tool to determine children’s creativity levels as well. In this

case, teachers can use assessment sheets that are proposed at the end of
each story, which contain detailed indications about the operations to
be performed. Once the children’s answers have been collected in the
appropriate forms, scores will be attributed according to the procedure
illustrated in the cards themselves. For each form, three types of scores
can be calculated: “fluidity”, “flexibility” and “originality”. The first score
refers to the richness of the creative flow, that is, to the quantity of ideas
produced, regardless of their quality. The second score refers to the diver-
sity of the ideas: If they insist on the same line of thought, flexibility
score is low; If they range in different areas, the child presents a high
level of flexibility. Flexibility is operationally defined by the number of
categories to which the provided answers belong to. For example, asked
the question “List all the red things that come to your mind”, a child
who replies “strawberry, cherry, raspberry” is more fluid than one who
answers “mushroom, heart”. On the contrary, the former is less flexible
than the latter because all his answers fall into the same category (fruits)
while those of the second child refer to two different categories. The third
score is about the frequency of production of a particular idea: An original
one is provided by a single subject within the group.
2.1.4 The Training Programme and the Curriculum

The activities reported in the training programme (more than 120) can be
well integrated with non-creative school activities. Indeed, they provide
ideas for these moments, for example by suggesting interventions aimed
at extending the lexicon, studying scientific phenomena, understanding
technical mechanisms. In short, the training programme does not intend
to propose creative activities in specific moments of the curriculum, but
to give a creative direction to knowledges and skills developed by the
education system.
In consequence, it is important that students understand that the
requests included in the training programme differ from the traditional
tasks because there are different constraints (there is not only one
right answer, etc.), requirements, criteria, objectives (originality is impor-
tant, etc.), mental processes to be activated (to produce ideas freely, to
combine, etc.), and attitude (to imagine new ideas and situations, to try,
to take risks). All these aspects allow to complete other kinds of activities
to develop a creative mind, so to move on the more pertinent approach
according to situations and needs.
2.1.5 An Example of the Stories

This paragraph presents an example of a complete story with the related
proposed activities.
THE RED TELEPHONE
Didì and Didà—the main characters of the training programme—are
playing in their bedroom. At some point, however, as often happens between
siblings, they start to quarrel because they want to play with the same object,
but not together.
“It’s up to me; I’m the older brother!” Didì says, trying to forcefully
snatch it out from her sister’s hands.
“I want it, I’m the youngest!” replies Didà, who also pulls with all her
might.
“Don’t fight, children!” Daddy intervenes, who has come to see why they
are shouting. “Try to get along and play together: You will see that you will
have more fun! Now I want to tell you a story to better understand how
important it is to get along. Come on, stop it and come near!”
Dad continues, starting to tell his story.
Once upon a time there was a red telephone. It was a very good phone:
It could talk to everyone, even far away and in all the languages of the
world. It was very kind and helpful and it never tired in working, neither
by day nor at night. With his argentine trill, it warned of incoming calls
and seemed to say: “Drin drin come come, there is someone waiting.
Drin drin come come, but quickly, faster”.
One day, however, that red telephone began to fail. What had ever
happened?
It had happened that its numbers had begun to quarrel among them-
selves. The 1 wanted to go instead of the 9 because it felt unimportant.
The 2 had become angry with the 3 and it wanted no longer to be near
it. The 7 had felt neglected by his friend 8 and it wanted to change close:
It thought that with the 4 it would get along better and be more consid-
ered [reference to activity 1]. In short, every number had gone out of place
[reference to activity 2] and I don’t tell you that trouble had resulted from
it! [reference to activity 3].
Mum wanted to phone Aunt Laura, but the firemen answered her. Dad
phoned the office, but the automatic exact time was told. In short, it was
a real mess!
The red telephone was silent for a while, but then, as the numbers
continued to quarrel among themselves, he scolded them very loud:
“Enough, enough, stop it! You can’t go on in this way. But you don’t
understand that only together, each one in its place, you can be fine and
I can still work? [reference to activity 4] If you don’t end your quarrels, I
will be thrown away and you with me”.
The numbers were immediately silent and they realised that the phone
was right: There was not one number more important than another
among them, but each was useful as it was and where it was. They imme-
diately made up and each number quickly returned to its place [reference
to activity 5].
The red telephone started working again as before and to this day its
numbers always get along and they never dream of changing their order
[reference to activity 6].
ACTIVITY 1
(a) The teacher draws some objects resulting from the combination
of geometric shapes on the blackboard and asks the children to
draw other objects resulting from a different combination of these
shapes. An example is shown in Fig. 2.1 [Involved Operation:
COM ].
Fig. 2.1 An example

of combination of
shapes
Fig. 2.2 Example of shapes to be employed in a picture combination task
(b) A slightly more difficult version of the previous exercise occurs with
non-geometric shapes, such as those shown in Fig. 2.2 [Involved
Operation: COM ].
(c) Finally, the composition of parts is suggested in situations where,
unlike in the previous cases, there is only one possible answer.
These tests stimulate creativity because they help subjects to over-
come the tendency to make the most “natural” combinations in
favour of combinations that contravene symmetry or involve an
inversion of the setting of the problem [Involved operation: COM ].
Cut a square so as to divide it into parts as indicated in one of the

two cases shown in Fig. 2.3. Mix the pieces and ask the child to combine
them in order to reconstruct the square. In the first case, there will be
difficulty in juxtaposing the two larger pieces as in the starting figure;
children, like adults, will instead tend to form a right angle with these
pieces, a combination that prevents the solution of the problem. In the
second case, the prevailing tendency will be to bring the two semicircles
together so as to form a circle, thus avoiding the “shifting” which, as the
starting figure shows, is necessary to recompose the square.
Fig. 2.3 Materials of the task requiring to compose a square
ACTIVITY 2
The children are asked the following questions: “If you wanted to
change the ‘place’ like the numbers in the story, who, what and where
would you like to be?” Children make a drawing about it [Involved
operation: PRO].
ACTIVITY 3
The teacher recalls the moment in the story when the quarrel of
numbers creates a great deal of confusion. He/She asks the children to
think of other situations where a change in order or position produces
inconvenience [Involved operation: SIM ].
ACTIVITY 4
Insisting again on the importance of a certain order of elements, the
teacher offers children simple anagrams, whose solutions are perhaps
given by words drawn from history. It can also be interesting to propose
anagrams with multiple solutions (for example, “malb”; solutions: balm,
lamb) [Involved operation: COM ].
ACTIVITY 5
The teacher presents some cartoons and he/she says they are pages
of a book that a mischievous wind has scattered. It is now necessary to
reorder them. Each child can sequence the cartoons as he wishes and
invent a story about it. An example of usable cartoons is given in Fig. 2.4
[Involved operation: COM ].
Fig. 2.4 Examples of the cartoon recombination task
The original sequence of the first series of cartoons (B-C-D-A)

describes an oral test with negative results. The original sequence of the
second series (B-C-A-D) tells an oriental legend relating to the chrysan-
themum, a flower which, unlike in some cultures, is a symbol of life. A
little girl was very sad because her mom was seriously ill. One day she
heard a voice telling her that mom would live as many days as the petals
of a flower that was in a vase nearby. Then the girl began to divide the
four large petals of that flower in hundreds of very thin petals. Mom
healed and lived for many years. In both cases, children will be able to
find different narratives by freely combining the various cartoons.
ACTIVITY 6
Here is a problem centred on creating the right sequence of elements
whose solution requires overcoming the constraints and automatisms
triggered by the explanation of exercise. Children made a necklace by
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ludicrous mishaps; and in a third, entitled Cassandrino dilettante e
impresario, his too great love of music and the fair sex gets him into
quarrels with tenori and bassi, and especially with the prima donna
whom he courts, and with the maestro who is his rival. This maestro
is in the prime of youth; he has light hair and blue eyes, he loves
pleasure and good cheer, his wit is yet more seductive than his
person. All these qualities, and the very style of his dress, remind the
audience of one of the few great men modern Italy has produced.
There is a burst of applause; they recognise and greet Rossini.
Of the performances of marionettes in the houses of the Italian
nobility and middle classes, it is naturally much less easy to obtain
details than of those given in public. It is generally understood,
however, that the private puppets are far from prudish, and allow
themselves tolerable license in respect of politics. At Florence, at the
house of a rich merchant, a party was assembled to witness the
performance of a company of marionettes. M. Beyle was there. “The
theatre was a charming toy, only five feet wide, and which,
nevertheless, was an exact model of a large theatre. Before the play
began, the lights in the apartment were extinguished. A company of
twenty-four marionettes, eight inches in height, with leaden legs, and
which had cost a sequin apiece, performed a rather free comedy,
abridged from Machiavelli’s Mandragora.” At Naples the
performance was satirical, and its hero a secretary of state. In pieces
of this kind, there is generally a speaker for every puppet; and as it
often happens that the speakers are personally acquainted with the
voice, ideas, and peculiarities of the persons intended to be
caricatured, great perfection and point is thus given to the
performance.
When the passion of the Italians for marionettes is found to be so
strong, so general, so persevering, and, we may add, so refined and
ingenious, it is not to be wondered at that most other European
countries are largely indebted to Italy for their progress,
improvement, and, in some cases, almost for the first rudiments of
this minor branch of the drama. Even the Spain of the Middle Ages,
in most things so original and self-relying, was under some
obligations to Italy in this respect. The first name of any mark which
presents itself to the student of the history of Spanish puppet-shows
is that of a skilful mathematician of Cremona, Giovanni Torriani,
surnamed Gianello, of whom the learned critic Covarrubias speaks as
“a second Archimedes;” adding, that this illustrious foreigner
brought titeres to great perfection. That so distinguished a man
should have wasted his time on such frivolities requires some
explanation. The Emperor Charles V.’s love of curious mechanism
induced many of the first mechanicians of Germany and Italy to
apply themselves to the production of extraordinary automatons.
Writers have spoken of an artificial eagle which flew to meet him on
his entrance into Nuremberg, and of a wonderful iron fly, presented
to him by Jean de Montroyal, which, took wing of itself, described
circles in the air, and then settled on his arm—marvels of science
which other authors have treated as mere fables. Gianello won the
emperor’s favour by the construction of an admirable clock, followed
him to Spain, and passed two years with him in his monastic retreat,
striving, by ingenious inventions, to raise the spirits of his
melancholy patron, depressed by unwonted inactivity. “Charles V.,”
says Flaminio Strada, historian of the war in Flanders, “busied
himself, in the solitude of the cloisters of St Just, with the
construction of clocks. He had for his master in that art Gianello
Torriani, the Archimedes of that time, who daily invented new
mechanisms to occupy the mind of Charles, eager and curious of all
those things. Often, after dinner, Gianello displayed upon the
prince’s table little figures of horses and armed men. There were
some that beat the drum, others that sounded the trumpet; some
were seen advancing against each other at a gallop, like enemies, and
assailing each other with lances. Sometimes the ingenious
mechanician let loose in the room small wooden birds, which flew in
all directions, and which were constructed with such marvellous
artifice that one day the superior of the convent, chancing to be
present, appeared to fear that there was magic in the matter.” The
attention of Charles V., even in the decline of his genius, was not,
however, wholly engrossed by such toys as these. He and Torriani
discussed and solved more useful and more serious problems—one,
amongst others, which Gianello realised after the prince’s death, and
which consisted in raising the waters of the Tagus to the heights of
Toledo. The improvements introduced by the skilful mechanician of
Cremona into the construction of marionettes were soon adopted by
the titereros. Puppets were already a common amusement in Spain,
and had right of station on all public places, and at all fairs, and
entrance into most churches. It is to be observed, that Italian
influence can be traced in the Peninsula only in the material and
mechanical departments of the marionette theatres. The characters
and the subjects of the plays have always been strictly national,
notwithstanding that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century
down to the commencement of the nineteenth—and probably even at
the present day—the exhibitors of these shows were principally
foreigners, including many gypsies. Punchinello succeeded in getting
naturalised under the name of Don Cristoval Pulichinela; but he does
not appear ever to have played a prominent part, and probably was
rather a sort of supernumerary to the show, like Master Peter’s ape.
Occupation was perhaps hard to find for him in the class of pieces
preferred by Spanish taste. The nature of these it is not difficult to
conjecture. Spain, superstitious, chivalrous, and semi-Moorish,
hastened to equip its puppets in knightly harness and priestly robes.
“Moors, knights, giants, enchanters, the conquerors of the Indies, the
characters of the Old and the New Testament, and especially saints
and hermits, are,” says M. Magnin, “the usual actors in these shows.
The titeres so frequently wear monkish garb, especially in Portugal,
that the circumstance has had an influence on their name in this
country, where they are more often called bonifrates than titeres.
The composition of bonifrate (although the word is old, perhaps
older than titere) indicates an Italian origin.” Legends of saints and
the book of ballads (Romancero) supplied most of the subjects of the
plays performed by Spanish puppets. Of this we have an example in
the drama selected by Cervantes for performance by Master Peter’s
titeres before Don Quixote. In the course of his researches, M.
Magnin was surprised to find (although he ought, perhaps, to have
expected it) that bull-fights have had their turn of popularity on the
boards of the Spanish puppet-show. He traces this in a curious old
picaresque romance, the memoirs of the picara Justina. This
adventurous heroine gives sundry particulars of the life of her great-
grandfather, who had kept a theatre of titeres at Seville, and who put
such smart discourse into the mouths of his actors that, to hear him,
the women who sold fruit and chestnuts and turrones (cakes of
almonds and honey, still in use in Spain) quitted their goods and
their customers, leaving their hat or their brasero (pan of hot
embers) to keep shop. The popular manager was unfortunately of
irregular habits, and expended his substance in riotous living. His
money went, his mules, his puppets—the very boards of his theatre
were sold, and his health left him with his worldly goods, so that he
became the inmate of an hospital. When upon the eve of giving up
the ghost, his granddaughter relates, he lost his senses, and became
subject to such furious fits of madness, that one day he imagined
himself to be a puppet-show bull (un toro de titeres), and that he was
to fight a stone cross which stood in the court of the hospital.
Accordingly, he attacked it, crying out, “Ah perra! que te ageno!”
(words of defiance), and fell dead. The sister of charity, a good
simple woman, seeing this, exclaimed, “Oh the thrice happy man! he
has died at the foot of the cross, and whilst invoking it!” At a recent
date (1808), a French savant, travelling in Spain, went to the puppet
theatre at Valencia. The Death of Seneca was the title of the piece
performed. In presence of the audience, the celebrated philosopher,
the pride of Cordova, ended historically by opening his veins in a
bath. The streams of blood that flowed from his arms were simulated
cleverly enough by the movement of a red ribbon. An unexpected
miracle, less historical than the mode of death, wound up the drama.
Amidst the noise of fireworks, the pagan sage was taken up into
heaven in a glory, pronouncing, as he ascended, the confession of his
faith in Jesus Christ, to the perfect satisfaction of the audience. The
smell of powder must have been a novelty to Seneca’s nostrils; but
doubtless the rockets contributed greatly to the general effect of the
scene, and Spain, the country of anomalies, is not to be disconcerted
by an anachronism.
Into whatever country we follow the footsteps of the numerous and
motley family of the Puppets, we find that, however exotic their
habits may be on their first arrival in the land, they speedily become
a reflex of the peculiar genius, tastes, and characteristics of its
people. Thus in Italy, the land of song and dance, of strict theatrical
censors, and despotic governments, we find the burattini dealing in
sharp but polished jests at the expense of their rulers, excelling in the
ballet, and performing Rossini’s operas, without suppressions or
curtailment, with an orchestra of five or six instruments and singers
behind the scenes. The Spanish titere couches his lance and rides
forth to meet the Moor and rescue captive maidens, marches with
Cortes to the conquest of Montezuma’s capital, or enacts, with more
or less decorum, a moving incident from Holy Writ. In the Jokken
and Puppen of Germany we recognise the metaphysical and
fantastical tendencies of that country, its broad and rather heavy
humour, its quaint superstitions, domestic sprites, and enchanted
bullets. And in France, where puppet-shows were early cherished,
and encouraged by the aristocracy as well as by the people, we need
not wonder to find them elegant, witty, and frivolous—modelling
themselves, in fact, upon their patrons. M. Magnin dwells long upon
the puppets of his native land, which possess, however, less character
and strongly marked originality than those of some of the other
countries he discourses of. It is here he first traces the etymology of
the word marionette—unmistakably French, although it has been of
late years adopted in Germany and England. He considers it to be
one of the numerous affectionate diminutives of the name of Marie,
which crept into the French language in its infancy, and which soon
came to be applied to those little images of the Virgin that were
exhibited, gaily dressed and tinsel bedecked, to the adoration of the
devout. In a pastoral poem of the 13th century, he finds the pretty
name of Marionette applied by her lover to a young girl called
Marion. “Several streets of old Paris, in which were sold or exposed
images of the Virgin and saints, were called, some Rues des
Marmouzets (there are still two streets of this name in Paris), others
Rues des Mariettes, and somewhat later, Rues des Marionettes. As
irony makes its way everywhere, the amiable or religious sense of the
words Marotte, Mariotte, and Marionette, was soon exchanged for a
jesting and profane one. In the 15th century there was sung, in the
streets and taverns, an unchaste ditty called the Chant Marionnette.
The bauble of a licensed fool was called, and is still called, marotte;
‘by reason,’ says Ménage, ‘of the head of a marionette—that is to say,
of a little girl’—which surmounts it; and at last mountebanks
irreverently called their wooden actors and actresses marmouzets
and mariottes. At the end of the 16th century and commencement of
the 17th, several Protestant or sceptical writers were well pleased to
confound, with an intention of mockery, the religious and the
profane sense of the words marmouzets and marionettes. Henry
Estienne, inveighing, in his Apologie pour Herodote, against the
chastisements inflicted on the Calvinists for the mutilation of
madonnas and images of saints, exclaims: ‘Never did the Egyptians
take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has been
seen wreaked, in our days, on those who had mutilated some
marmouzet or marionette.’” It is curious here again to trace the
connection between Roman image-worship and the puppet-show.
The marionette, at first reverently placed in niches, with spangled
robe and burning lamp, is presently found perched at the end of a
jester’s bauble and parading a juggler’s board. The question here is
only of a name, soon abandoned by the sacred images to its
disreputable usurpers. But we have already seen, especially in the
case of Spain, what a scandalous confusion came to pass between
religious ceremonies and popular entertainments, until at times
these could hardly be distinguished from those; and, as far as what
occurred within them went, spectators might often be perplexed to
decide whether they were in a sacred edifice or a showman’s booth.
With respect to the French term marionette, it had yet to undergo,
after its decline and fall from a sacred to a profane application, a still
deeper degradation, before its final confinement to the class of
puppets it at the present day indicates. In the 16th century it came to
be applied not only to mechanical images of all kinds, sacred and
profane, but, by a strange extension of its meaning, to the supposed
supernatural dolls and malignant creatures that sorcerers were
accused of fostering, as familiar imps and as idols. From a huge
quarto printed in Paris in 1622, containing a collection of trials for
magic which took place between 1603 and 1615, M. Magnin extracts a
passage showing how certain poor idiots were accused of “having
kept, close confined and in subjection in their houses, marionettes,
which are little devils, having usually the form of toads, sometimes of
apes, always very hideous.” The rack, the gallows, and the faggot
were the usual lot of the unfortunate supposed possessors of these
unwholesome puppets.
There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce
disputes between provinces or towns for the honour of having been
the birthplace of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like
manner, M. Magnin labours hard, and expends much erudition, to
prove that the French Polichinelle, notwithstanding the similarity of
name, is neither the son, nor in any way related to the Italian
Pulcinella, but is thoroughly French in origin and character. That
Harlequin and Pantaloon came from south of the Alps he readily
admits; also, that a name has been borrowed from Italy for the
French Punch. But he stands up manfully for the originality of this
jovial and dissipated puppet, which he maintains to be a thoroughly
Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a point to the settlement of
which we will not give many lines—the arguments and facts he brings
forward are ingenious and amusing. After displaying the marked
difference that exists in every respect, except in that of the long
hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of Paris and
that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active fellow,
dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock and
trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different character
from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach,
although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a
portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I
must say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature,
Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV.,
but at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in
the guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As
to the hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in
France, of a facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam
de la Halle was called the hunchback of Arras, not that he was
deformed, but on account of his humorous vein.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his

spangled doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant
cuirass of men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in
fashion, which imitated the curve of the cuirass.[6] The very hat of
Polichinelle (I do not refer to his modern three-cornered covering,
but to the beaver, with brim turned up, which he still wore in the
seventeenth century), was the hat of the gentlemen of that day, the
hat à la Henri IV. Finally, certain characteristic features of his face,
as well as the bold jovial amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind
us, in caricature, of the qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In
short, notwithstanding his Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to
me to be a completely national type, and one of the most vivacious
and sprightly creations of French fancy.”
The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been
handed down to posterity, were a father and son called Brioché.
According to the most authentic of the traditions collected, Jean
Brioché exercised, at the beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two
professions of tooth-drawer and puppet-player. His station was at
the end of the Pont Neuf, near the gate of Nesle, and his comrade
was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With or without his consent,
Polichinelle was about this time dragged into politics. Amongst the
numerous Mazarinades and political satires that deluged Paris in
1649, there was one entitled Letter from Polichinelle to Jules
Mazarin. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by way of
signature:—
“Je suis Polichinelle,
Qui fait la sentinelle
A la porte de Nesle.”
It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi
(who was perhaps a countryman and protégé of the cardinal’s),
written with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a
good advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of
some political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the
French Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is
made to say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have
always been better liked and more respected by the people than you
have; for how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say:
‘Let us go and see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them
say: ‘Let us go and see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to
an untimely end, if we are to put faith in a little book now very rare
(although it has gone through several editions), entitled, Combat de
Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché. This Cirano was a
mad duellist of extreme susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage,
“which was much disfigured, was cause of the death of more than ten
persons. He could not endure that any should look at him, and those
who did had forthwith to draw and defend themselves.” This lunatic,
it is said, one day took Fagotin for a lackey who was making faces at
him, and ran him through on the spot. The story may have been a
mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the mistake he is
said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we become
acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey.
“He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author
of the Combat de Cirano; “his master had put him on an old Spanish
hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck
was a frill à la Scaramouche; he wore a doublet with six movable
skirts, trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather
the look of a lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a
pointless blade.” It was this innocent weapon, according to the writer
quoted from, that poor Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish
against the terrible Cirano. Whatever the manner of his death, his
fame lived long after him; and even as certain famous French
comedians have transmitted their names to the particular class of
parts they filled during their lives, so did Fagotin bequeath his to all
monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in his metrical narrative
of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the year 1664, talks of
“the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises Fagotin’s tricks in his
fable of The Lion and his Court, and Molière makes the sprightly and
malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended wife that she shall
have, in carnival time,
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,
Et parfois Fagotin et les marionnettes.”
Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even

incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest
dramatist. It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669)
that puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their
popularity in France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the
accounts of expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of
1365 livres “to Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at
St Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and
November, to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded
by another puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months.
The dauphin was then nine years old, and evidently very fond of
Polichinelle—to whose exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of
Fagotin, it is not, however, to be supposed that the attractions of
Brioché’s performances were confined. He and his brother showman
had doubtless a numerous company of marionettes, performing a
great variety of pieces, since they were able to amuse the dauphin
and his juvenile court for nearly five months without intermission.
Like all distinguished men, Brioché, decidedly one of the celebrities
of his time, and to whom we find constant allusions in the prose and
verse of that day, had his enemies and his rivals. Amongst the former
was to be reckoned no less a personage than Bossuet, who
denounced marionettes (with a severity that might rather have been
expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than from a prelate of
Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment, calculated to
counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his flock. M.
Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him
convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper
when thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were
a few harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse
and half prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England,
describes the fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure
of the marionettes’ transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he
says, “the hero of that stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not
sufficiently so to bring a blush to the cheek of the damsel he diverts
by his witticisms.” We would not take Anthony Hamilton’s evidence
in such matters for more than it is worth. There was, no doubt, a fair
share of license in the pieces arranged for these puppets, or in the
jests introduced by their invisible readers; and as regards their
actions, M. Magnin himself tells us of the houzarde, an extremely
gaillarde dance, resembling that called the antiquaile mentioned in
Rabelais. Notwithstanding which, the marionettes were in great
favour with very honest people, and Charles Perrault, one of the most
distinguished members of the old French Academy, praised them in
verse as an agreeable pastime. The jokes Brioché put into the mouths
of his actors were greatly to the taste of the Parisians; so much so
that when an English mechanician exhibited other puppets which he
had contrived to move by springs instead of strings, the public still
preferred Brioché, “on account of the drolleries he made them say.”
That he was not always and everywhere so successful, we learn by a
quaint extract from the Combat de Cirano, already mentioned.
Brioché, says the facetious author, “one day took it into his head to
ramble afar with his little restless wooden Æsop, twisting, turning,
dancing, laughing, chattering, &c. This heteroclite marmouzet, or,
better to speak, this comical hunchback, was called Polichinelle. His
comrade’s name was Voisin. (More likely, suggests M. Magnin, the
voisin, the neighbour or gossip of Polichinelle.) After visiting several
towns and villages, they got on Swiss ground in a canton where
marionettes were unknown. Polichinelle having shown his phiz, as
well as all his gang, in presence of a people given to burn sorcerers,
they accused Brioché to the magistrate. Witnesses declared that they
had heard little figures jabber and talk, and that they must be devils.
Judgment was pronounced against the master of this wooden
company animated by springs. But for the interference of a man of
sense they would have made a roast of Brioché. They contented
themselves with stripping the marionettes naked. O poveretta!” The
same story is told by the Abbé d’Artigny, who lays the scene at
Soleure, and says that Brioché owed his release to a captain of the
French-Swiss regiment then recruiting in the cantons. Punch at that
time had powerful protectors. Brioché’s son and successor, Francis,
whom the Parisians familiarly called Fanchon, having been
offensively interfered with, wrote at once to the king. It would seem
that, without quitting the vicinity of the Pont Neuf, he desired to
transfer his standing to the Faubourg St Germains end, and that the
commissaire of that district prohibited his exhibition. On the 16th
October 1676, the great Colbert wrote to the lieutenant-general of
police, communicating his majesty’s commands that Brioché should
be permitted to exercise his calling, and should have a proper place
assigned to him where he might do so.
The history of the French marionettes, during the first half of the
eighteenth century, is given in considerable detail by M. Magnin, but
does not contain any very striking episodes. It is to be feared their
morals got rather relaxed during the latter years of Louis XIV.’s
reign, and under the Regency, and Bossuet might then have
thundered against them with greater reason than in 1686. Towards
the middle of the century, a great change took place in the character
of their performances: witty jests, and allusions to the scandal of
court and city, were neglected for the sake of mechanical effects and
surprises; the vaudeville and polished farce, for which the French
stage has long been and still is famous, were replaced by showy
dramas and pièces à spectacle, in which the military element seems
to have predominated, judging from the titles of some of them—The
Bombardment of Antwerp, The Taking of Charleroi, The General
Assault of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was the commencement of the decline
of puppet performances in France; the public taste underwent a
change; the eye was to be gratified, wit and satire were in great
measure dispensed with. “Vaucanson’s automatons, the flute-player,
the duck, &c., were imitated in every way, and people ran in crowds
to see Kempel’s chess-player. At the fair of St Germains, in 1744, a
Pole, named Toscani, opened a picturesque and automatical theatre,
which seems to have served as a prelude to M. Pierre’s famous show.
‘Here are to be seen,’ said the bills, ‘mountains, castles, marine
views; also figures that perfectly imitate all natural movements,
without being visibly acted upon by any string; and, which is still
more surprising, here are seen a storm, rain, thunder, vessels
perishing, sailors swimming, &c.’ On all hands such marvels as these
were announced, and also (I blush to write it) combats of wild
animals.” Bull and bear baits, wolf and dog fights, in refined France,
just a century ago, for all the world as in England in the days of
buxom Queen Bess. M. Magnin copies an advertisement of one of
these savage exhibitions, which might pass for a translated placard of
the beast-fighting establishment that complained of the opposition
made to them by Will Shakespeare and his players. Martin was the
name of the man who kept the pit at the barrière de Sèvres; and
after lauding the wickedness of his bull, the tenacity of his dogs, and
the exceeding fierceness of his new wolf, he informs the public that
he has “pure bear oil for sale.” When Paris ran after such coarse
diversions as these, what hope was there for the elves of the puppet-
show? Punch shrugged his hump, and crept moodily into a corner.
Bull-rings and mechanism were too many for him. Twenty years later
we find him again in high favour and feather at the fair of St
Germains, where Audinot, an author and ex-singer at the united
comic and Italian operas, having quarrelled with his comrades and
quitted the theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he called
bamboches, and which were striking likenesses of the performers at
the Opéra Comique, Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself.
Polichinelle appeared amongst them in the character of a gentleman
of the bedchamber, and found the same sort of popularity that
Cassandrino has since enjoyed at Rome. The monarchy was in its
decline, the follies and vices of the courtiers of the 18th century had
brought them into contempt, and a parody of them was welcome to
the people. The fair over, Audinot installed his puppets in a little
theatre on the boulevard, which he called the Ambigu Comique, to
indicate the variety of the entertainments there given, and there he
brought out several new pieces, one, amongst others, entitled Le
Testament de Polichinelle. It was quite time for Punch to make his
will; his theatre was in a very weakly state. It became the fashion to
replace puppets by children; and one hears little more of marionettes
in France until Seraphin revives them in his Ombres Chinoises. Few
persons who have been in Paris will have failed to notice, when
walking round the Palais Royal between two and three in the
afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled weary-
looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the
gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between
a whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not
very intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights
that long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day,
as long as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of
years before—he has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling
movement by which he endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He
is identified with the railings against which he stands, and is as much
a part of the Palais Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the
cannon that daily fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one
to discover the purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with
“Les Ombres Chinoises de Seraphin”—this very drawlingly spoken—
and ends with “Prrrrenez vos billets”—a rattle on the r, and the word
billets dying away in a sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the
ingenious Dominique Seraphin exhibited his Chinese shadows
several times before the royal family at Versailles, was allowed to call
his theatre “Spectacle des Enfans de France,” and took up his
quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very house opposite to whose
door the monotonous and melancholy man above described at the
present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy years Seraphin
and his descendants have pulled the strings of their puppets. But
here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movable sculpture, but
movable painting—the shadows of figures cut out of sheets of
pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a
transparent curtain. The shadows, owing doubtless to their
intangible nature, have passed unscathed through the countless
political changes and convulsions that have occurred during the
three quarters of a century that they have inhabited a nook in the
palace which has been alternately Cardinal, Royal, National, Imperial
—all things by turn, and nothing long. They have lasted and thriven,
as far as bodiless shades can thrive, under Republic and Empire,
Directory and Consulate, Restoration and Citizen Monarchy,
Republic, and Empire again. We fear it must be admitted that time-
serving is at the bottom of this long impunity and prosperity. In the
feverish days of the first Revolution, marionettes had sans-culotte
tendencies, with the exception of Polichinelle, who, mindful
doubtless of his descent from Henry IV., played the aristocrat, and
carried his head so high, that at last he lost it. M. Magnin passes
hastily over this affecting phase in the career of his puppet friends,
merely quoting a few lines from Camille Desmoulins, which bear
upon the subject. “This selfish multitude,” exclaims the Vieux
Cordelier, indignant at the apathetic indifference of the Parisians in
presence of daily human hecatombs, “is formed to follow blindly the
impulse of the strongest. There was fighting in the Carrousel and the
Champ de Mars, and the Palais Royal displayed its shepherdesses
and its Arcadia. Close by the guillotine, beneath whose keen edge fell
crowned heads, on the same square, and at the same time, they also
guillotined Polichinelle, who divided the attention of the eager
crowd.” Punch, who had passed his life hanging the hangman, was at
a nonplus in presence of the guillotine. He missed the running noose
he was so skilful in drawing tight, and mournfully laid his neck in the
bloody groove. Some say that he escaped, that his dog was dressed
up, and beheaded in his stead, and that he himself reached a foreign
shore, where he presently regained his freedom of speech and former
jollity of character. M. Magnin himself is clearly of opinion that he is
not dead, but only sleeps. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to awaken
him here in France? Can it be that the little Æsop has nothing new to
tell us? Above all, do not say that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies.
You doubt it? You do not know then what Polichinelle is? He is the
good sense of the people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laugh. Yes,
Polichinelle will laugh, sing, and hiss, as long as the world contains
vices, follies, and things to ridicule. You see very well that
Polichinelle is not near his death. Polichinelle is immortal!”
To England M. Magnin allots nearly as many pages as to his own
country, and displays in them a rare acquaintance with our language,
literature, and customs. It would in no way have surprised him, he
says, had the playful and lightsome muse of the puppet-show been
made less welcome by the Germanic races than by nations of Greco-
Roman origin. The grave and more earnest temper generally
attributed to the former would have accounted for their disregard of
a pastime they might deem frivolous, and fail to appreciate. He was
well pleased, then, to find his wooden clients, his well-beloved
marionettes, as popular and as well understood on the banks of the
Thames, the Oder, and the Zuyder Zee, as in Naples, Paris, or Seville.
“In England especially,” he says, “the taste for this kind of spectacle
has been so widely diffused, that one could hardly name a single
poet, from Chaucer to Lord Byron, or a single prose-writer, from Sir
Philip Sydney to Hazlitt, in whose works are not to be found
abundant information on the subject, or frequent allusions to it. The
dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory of the
reigns of Elizabeth and James I., supply us with the most curious
particulars of the repertory, the managers, and the stage of the
marionettes. Shakespeare himself has not disdained to draw from
this singular arsenal ingenious or energetic metaphors, which he
places in the mouths of his most tragic personages at the most
pathetic moments. I can name ten or twelve of his plays in which this
occurs.” (The list follows.) “The cotemporaries and successors of this
great poet—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant,
Swift, Addison, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan—have also
borrowed many moral or satirical sallies from this popular diversion.
Thanks to this singular tendency of the English dramatists to busy
themselves with the proceedings of their little street-corner rivals, I
have found in their writings much assistance—as agreeable as
unexpected—in the task I have undertaken. Deprived, as one
necessarily is in a foreign country, of direct sources and original
pamphlets, having at my disposal only those standard works of great
writers that are to be met with on the shelves of every library, I have
found it sufficient, strange to say! to collate the passages so
abundantly furnished me by these chosen authors to form a
collection of documents concerning English puppets more
circumstantial and more complete, I venture to think, than any that
have hitherto been got together by the best-informed native critics.”
Others, if they please, may controvert the claim here put forward; we
shall content ourselves with saying that the amount of research
manifested in M. Magnin’s long essay on English puppets does as
much credit to his industry as the manner of the compilation does to
his judgment, acumen, and literary talent. It must be observed,
however, that he has not altogether limited himself, when seeking
materials and authorities, to the chosen corps of English dramatists,
poets, and essayists, but has consulted sundry antiquarian
authorities, tracts of the time of the commonwealth, the works of
Hogarth, those of Hone, Payne Collier, Thomas Wright, and other
modern or cotemporary writers. At the same time, this portion of his
book contains much that will be novel to most English readers, and
abounds in curious details and pertinent reflections on old English
character and usages. If we do not dwell upon it at some length, it is
because we desire, whilst room remains, to devote a page or two to
Germany and the Northerns. We must not omit, however, to mention
that M. Magnin joins issue with Mr Payne Collier on the question of
the origin of the English Punch. Mr Collier makes him date from
1688, and brings him over from Holland in the same ship with
William of Orange. M. Magnin takes a different view, and makes out
a very fair case. He begins by remarking that several false derivations
have been assigned to the name of Punch. “Some have imagined I
know not what secret and fantastical connection between Punch’s
name, and even between the fire of Punch’s wit, and the ardent
beverage of which the recipe, it is said, came to us from Persia. It is
going a great deal too far in search of an error. Punch is simply the
name of our friend Pulchinello, a little altered and contracted by the
monosyllabic genius of the English language. In the early period of
his career in England we find the names Punch and Punchinello used
indifferently for each other. Is it quite certain that Punch came to
London from the Hague, in the suite of William III.? I have doubts of
it. His learned biographer admits that there are traces of his presence
in England previous to the abdication of James II.... Certain passages
of Addison’s pretty Latin poem on puppet-shows (Machinæ
Gesticulantes) prove that Punch’s theatre was in great progress on
the old London puppet-shows in the days of Queen Elizabeth.” The
personal appearance, and some of the characteristics of Punch,
certainly induce a belief that he is of French origin; and even though
it be proved that he was imported into England from Holland, may it
not be admitted as highly probable that he went to the latter country
with the refugees, who for several years previously to the Revolution
of 1688 had been flocking thither from France? We risk the question
with all diffidence, and without the slightest intention of
pronouncing judgment on so important a matter. And as we have no
intention or desire to take up the cudgels in behalf of the origin of
that Punch, who, as the unfortunate and much-battered Judy can
testify, himself handles those weapons so efficiently, we refer the
reader to M. Magnin for the pros and cons of the argument, and start
upon a rapid tour through Germany and northern Europe. M.
Magnin accelerates his pace as he approaches the close of his
journey, and pauses there only where his attention is arrested by
some striking novelty or original feature, to omit mention of which
would be to leave a gap in the history he has undertaken to write.
Germany is the native land and head-quarters of wood-cutters. We
mean not hewers of wood for the furnace, but cunning carvers in
smooth-grained beech and delicate deal; artists in timber, we may
truly say, when we contemplate the graceful and beautiful objects for
which we are indebted to the luxuriant forests and skilful knives of
Baden and Bavaria. The Teutonic race also possess, in a very high
degree, the mechanical genius, to be convinced of which we have but
to look at the ingenious clocks, with their astronomical evolutions,
moving figures, crowing cocks, and the like, so constantly met with in
all parts of Germany, in Switzerland, and in Holland. This double
aptitude brought about an early development of anatomical
sculpture in Germany, applied, as usual, to various purposes,
religious and civil, serious and recreative, wonderful images of
saints, figures borne in municipal processions, and dramatic
puppets. These latter are traced by M. Magnin as far back as the 12th
century. Even in a manuscript of the 10th century he finds the word
Tocha or Docha used in the sense of doll or puppet (puppa), and also
in that of mime (mima, mimula). Somewhat later the word Tokke-
spil (puppet-show) occurs in the poems of the Minnesingers. One of
these, Master Sigeher, when stigmatising the Pope’s abuse of his
influence with the Electors of the Empire, writes—
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”
“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating

from the end of the 12th century, and adorned with a great number
of curious miniatures, one of which, under the strange title of Ludus
Monstrorum, represents a puppet-show. Two little figures, armed
cap-à-pie, are made to move and fight by means of a string, whose
ends two showmen hold. The painting proves not only the existence
of marionettes at that period, but also that they were sufficiently
common to supply a symbol intelligible to all, since it is put as an
illustration to a moral reflection on the vanity of human things. From
the equipment of the figures it may also be inferred that military
subjects were then in favour on the narrow stage of the puppet-show.
And M. Magnin, zealous to track his fox to its very earth, risks the
word Niebelungen, but brings no evidence to support his surmise. In
the 14th and 15th centuries we obtain more positive data as to the
nature of the puppenspiel, and of its performances. Romantic
subjects, historical fables, were then in fashion—the four sons of
Aymon, Genevieve of Brabant, the Lady of Roussillon, to whom her
lover’s heart was given to eat, and who killed herself in her despair.
The history of Joan of Arc was also a favourite subject. That heroine
had an episodical part in a piece performed at Ratisbon in 1430.
“There exists,” says M. Magnin, “a precious testimony to a
performance of marionettes at that period. In a fragment of the poem
of Malagis, written in Germany in the 15th century, after a Flemish
translation of our old romance of Maugis, the fairy Oriande de
Rosefleur, who has been separated for fifteen years from her beloved
pupil, Malagis, arrives, disguised as a juggler, at the castle of
Rigremont, where a wedding is being celebrated. She offers the
company the diversion of a puppet-show; it is accepted; she asks for
a table to serve as a stage, and exhibits upon it two figures, a male
and female magician. Into their mouths she puts stanzas, which tell
her history and cause her to be recognised by Malagis. M. Von der
Hagen has published this fragment from the MS. preserved at
Heidelberg, in Germania, vol. viii., p. 280. The scene in question is
not to be found either in the French poem or the French prose
romance.” The 16th century was an epoch in the annals of German
puppets. Scepticism and sorcery were the order of the day. Faust
stepped upon the stage and held it long.
It appears to have been the custom, rarely deviated from by the
puppet-shows of any nation or time, to have a comic character or
buffoon, who intruded, even in the most tragical pieces, to give by his
jests variety and relief to the performance. There was nothing odd or
startling in this in the Middle Ages, when every great personage—
emperor, king, or prelate—had his licensed jester attached to his
household. M. Magnin is in some doubt as to the name first given to
this character in Germany, unless it was Eulenspiegel (a name which
in modern times has acquired some celebrity as a literary
pseudonyme), or rather Master Hemmerlein, whose caustic sarcasm
partakes at once of the humour of the devil and the hangman. Master
Hemmerlein, according to Frisch, had a face like a frightful mask; he
belonged to the lowest class of marionettes, under whose dress the
showman passes his hand to move them. This author adds that the
name of Hemmerlein was sometimes given to the public executioner,
and that it is applied to the devil in the Breviarium Historicum of
Sebald. This will bear explanation. The word Hämmerlein or
Hämmerling (the latter is now the usual orthography) has three very
distinct meanings—a jack-pudding, a flayer, and a gold-hammer
(bird). The German headsman, in former days, combined with his
terrible duties the occupation of a flayer or knacker, charged to
remove dead horses and other carrion; hence he was commonly
spoken of as Master Hämmerlein.[7]
It is difficult to say by what grim mockery or strange assimilation
his name was applied to the buffoon of the puppet-show. We have
little information, however, concerning Hämmerlein the droll, who
appears to have had but a short reign when he was supplanted by the
famous Hanswurst, to whom out-spoken Martin Luther compared
Duke Henry of Brunswick. “Miserable, choleric spirit” (here Martin
addresses himself to Satan), “you, and your poor possessed creature
Henry, you know, as well as all your poets and writers, that the name
of Hanswurst is not of my invention; others have employed it before
me, to designate those rude and unlucky persons who, desiring to
exhibit finesse, commit but clumsiness and impropriety.” And that
there might be no mistake as to his application of the word, he adds:
“Many persons compare my very gracious lord, Duke Henry of
Brunswick, to Hanswurst, because the said lord is replete and
corpulent.” One of the consequences in Germany of Luther’s
preachings, and of the more fanatical denunciations of some of his
disciples and cotemporaries, was terrible havoc amongst church
pictures and statues, including automatical images and groups, then
very numerous in that country, and an end was at that time put to
dramatic church ceremonies, not only in districts that embraced the
new doctrine, but in many that adhered to Rome. Some of the
performances were of the most grotesque description. They were
particularly frequent in Poland, where, at Christmas time, in many
churches, and especially in those of monasteries, the people were
amused between mass and vespers, by the play of the Szopka or
stable. “In this kind of drama,” says M. Magnin, “lalki (little dolls of
wood or card-board) represented Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the angels,
the shepherds, and the three Magi on their knees, with their offerings
of gold, incense, and myrrh, not forgetting the ox, the ass, and St.
John the Baptist’s lamb. Then came the massacre of the innocents, in
the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake. The wicked
prince, in his despair, called upon death, who soon made his
appearance, in the form of a skeleton, and cut off his head with his
scythe. Then a black devil ascended, with a red tongue, pointed
horns, and a long tail, picked up the king’s body on the end of his
pitchfork, and carried it off to the infernal regions.” This strange
performance was continued in the Polish churches until the middle
of the 18th century, with numerous indecorous variations. Expelled
from consecrated edifices, it is nevertheless preserved to the present
day, as a popular diversion, in all the provinces of the defunct
kingdom of Poland. From Christmas-tide to Shrove Tuesday it is
welcomed by both the rural and the urban population, by the
peasantry, the middle classes, and even in the dwellings of the
nobility.
In Germany, the last twenty years of the seventeenth century
witnessed a violent struggle between the church and the stage, or it
should rather be said a relentless persecution of the latter by the
former, which could oppose only remonstrances to the intolerant
rigour of the consistories. The quarrel had its origin at Hamburg. A
clergyman refused to administer the sacrament to two stage-players.
An ardent controversy ensued; the dispute became envenomed; the
Protestant clergy made common cause; the anti-theatrical movement
spread over all Germany. In vain did several universities, appealed to
by the comedians, prove, from the most respectable authorities, the
innocence of their profession, of which the actors themselves
published sensible and judicious defences; in vain did several princes
endeavour to counterbalance, by marks of esteem and consideration,
the exaggerated severity of the theologians; the majority of the public
sided with its pastors. Players were avoided as dissolute vagabonds;
and although, whilst condemning the performers, people did not
cease to frequent the performances, a great many comedians, feeling
themselves humiliated, abandoned the stage to foreigners and to
marionettes. The regular theatres rapidly decreased in number, and
puppet-shows augmented in a like ratio. “At the end of the 17th
century,” says Flögel, “the Haupt-und-Staatsactionen usurped the
place of the real drama. These pieces were played sometimes by
mechanical dolls, sometimes by actors.” The meaning of the term
Haupt-und-Staatsaction is rather obscure, but it was in fact applied
to almost every kind of piece performed by puppets. It was bound to

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Enhancing Creativity Through

Story-Telling: Innovative Training

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

of poverty of ideas that students show. They complain that behaviours

1. Creativity consists of a unique mental mechanism. Thus, people can

Given these assumptions, it is not surprising that the traditional

1. Develop an integrated structure of various mental mechanisms, each

Various attempts to integrate cognitive, emotional and personality aspects

scores is found in the training conditions as compared to the control

1. To know various creative strategies and the conditions under which

indications about how to use creativity empowerment tools that acti-

Milano, Italy Alessandro Antonietti

1 The Mechanisms of Creative Thinking 1

2 Short Stories for High Goals: The “Creativity

2.2.3 An Example of the Adventures 35

3 In Search of the Volcano’s Secret: The “Programme

4 A Special School Year: The Programme “Developing

Alessandro Antonietti he is full professor of psychology at the Catholic

Chiara Valenti she is psychologist and psychotherapist in training. She

Fig. 2.1 An example of combination of shapes 20

Fig. 4.5 Connecting subtest mean scores before and after

Table 4.1 The main characters of the training programme 73

The Mechanisms of Creative Thinking

Alessandro Antonietti, Barbara Colombo,

Abstract The theoretical model at the basis of the training programmes

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1

Keywords Creativity · Divergent thinking · Productive thinking ·

1.1 Three Main Theoretical Perspectives

creative activity consists of the recombination and processing of informa-

reorganisation of available informational data; (c) the discovery of new

fields usually considered remote, and possibly antithetical, is the basic

relationships, whereas individuals with low intelligence and high creativity

perception, intuition, flexibility) as opposed to the rock-logic (based on

as those implemented by the “open” teachers—would be to not allow the

Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1998). The computer and the mind. London: Collins.

Short Stories for High Goals: The “Creativity

Chiara Valenti and Alessandro Antonietti

Abstract Two training programmes aimed at increasing the creative skills

C. Valenti (B) · A. Antonietti

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 15

Keywords Creativity · Creative training · Creativity testing · Fluidity ·

2.1 The Training Programme

2.1.2 The Creative Activities

2.1.3 The Training Programme as an Assessment Tool

or even as, a tool to determine children’s creativity levels as well. In this

2.1.4 The Training Programme and the Curriculum

2.1.5 An Example of the Stories

Fig. 2.1 An example

Fig. 2.2 Example of shapes to be employed in a picture combination task

Cut a square so as to divide it into parts as indicated in one of the

Fig. 2.3 Materials of the task requiring to compose a square

Fig. 2.4 Examples of the cartoon recombination task

The original sequence of the first series of cartoons (B-C-D-A)

The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his

Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even

“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”

There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating

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