CHILDHOOD AND GENRE IN ITALY AND THE UK. THE SCHOOL STORY: 'CUORE' AND 'TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS'

This essay is part of an ongoing comparative literature and culture project which examines classics of various genres of Italian and British children’s books in terms of national and international images1. Italy’s most famous school story, Edmondo De Amicis’s Cuore (1886) is seen through the lens of the most influential British example of the school story genre, Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), and vice versa. This parallel and interactive reading highlights contrasting (and often unexpected) national attitudes to education both in principle and practice, class, and religion. Tom Brown’s Schooldays¸ essentially a liberal text, stands at the head of a genre that has to this day a symbiotic relationship with an economically-based and religiously infused class system. Cuore, a non-religious book in a religious country was the standard-bearer for a society of classless childhoods. The books contribute forcefully to the unconscious national images of Italy and Britain.