Episode 24 - Dr Anna Gasperini - Child Nutrition in C19 English and Italian Literature

Victorian Legacies

In this episode I'm joined by Dr Anna Gasperini, where we discuss her work on children's literature and child nutrition. We discuss how food in children's literature sublimates and represents a lot of things, including 'taboo' subjects. Children's literature was previously seen as unsophisticated in the academy (like fantasy), which segues into a brief chat about Terry Pratchett's Discworld! We then continue to consider how food was linked to the acceptable and unacceptable body and how that notion is constructed in society, reinforced or challenged in children's literature. The greedy child and the mal/nourished child, and how these both are seen as unacceptable within 19th century.
Trigger warning for some dark children's literature.
About my guest: Dr Anna Gasperini is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. She has just completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research project on English and Italian nineteenth-century children’s literature and the history of child nutrition. Her most recent article on the topic, “The ‘Gluttonous Child’ Narrative in Italy and Britain: A Transnational Analysis”, has been published OA in the Journal of Victorian Culture. She is the author of Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction, Medicine, and Anatomy - The Victorian Penny Blood and the 1832 Anatomy Act (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
For more information on Anna's work, check out the details below:
Twitter: @AnnaGDreadful
Latest Articles (Full links for these are open access and will be available on our FB page!):
“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”. Modern Languages Open, (1), 2022, p.2.
“The ‘Gluttonous Child’ Narrative in Italy and Britain: A Transnational Analysis”. Journal of Victorian Culture, 2022,
“‘I know I'm fatter’: hunger and bodily awareness in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden”. Rhesis – International Journal of Linguistics, Philology and Literature. Issue 11.2, 2020.
Check out Anna's suggestions:
Terry Pratchett - Dodger
Christina Rossetti - Speaking Likenesses
Hugh Cunningham - The Invention of Childhood
Sarah Wise - The Italian Boy
Episode Credits:
Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound
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