Minimal departures: Narratives of younger female mobility in late Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-century Italian children's literature

Abstract

Mobility narratives in late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Italian literature for children reflect the dramatic conditions of vagrancy, abandonment and forced relocation, as well as the situation of child-labor exploitation and child trade through apprenticeship contracts. They also document experiences of mass emigration. In my essay I intend to: i) acknowledge that children's conditions have been the object of an extensive multi-disciplinary debate in die 1800s and early 1900s; ii) briefly discuss the specifics of Italian children's literature and the representation of young male mobility; iii) identify some recurring narrative patterns of female (im) mobility; iv) point to three specific narrative plots that relate the mobility of younger female characters to national-identity and national-development issues; v) analyze two of these narratives, Maria Messina's Cenerella and Olga Visentini's La zingarella e la principessina, which were written during or in the aftermath of World War I.