The ‘Gluttonous Child’ Narrative in Italy and Britain: A Transnational Analysis

This article compares images of food as temptation, and hunger as test, in two samples of late-nineteenth century British and Italian children’s literature. It reads the narratives alongside coeval popular medical manuals on child health, examining recurring descriptions of children as natural gluttons in works dedicated to child nutrition. Putting the select fiction and non-fiction in dialogue with moral, scientific, and nation-building middle-class discourses circulating in both countries, the article finds that the ‘gluttonous child’ narrative was both transnational and transtextual.