Little Precossi, Stunted Becky: A Comparative Analysis of Child Hunger and National Body Health Discourses in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature in Italian and English

Abstract

This article compares two children’s literature classics, 'Cuore' by Edmondo De Amicis (1886) and 'A Little Princess' by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905), an Italian text and an American/British text respectively. In my analysis, I apply a medical historical angle to the two novels, reading their images of malnourished and stunted children in the light of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western debate on child malnutrition and national discourse.