Medieval Children

Medieval Children

Author: Nicholas Orme

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780300097542

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Looks at the lives of children, from birth to adolescence, in medieval England.


Growing Up in Medieval London

Growing Up in Medieval London

Author: Barbara A. Hanawalt

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1995-02-23

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0199879974

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When Barbara Hanawalt's acclaimed history The Ties That Bound first appeared, it was hailed for its unprecedented research and vivid re-creation of medieval life. David Levine, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called Hanawalt's book "as stimulating for the questions it asks as for the answers it provides" and he concluded that "one comes away from this stimulating book with the same sense of wonder that Thomas Hardy's Angel Clare felt [:] 'The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.'" Now, in Growing Up in Medieval London, Hanawalt again reveals the larger, fuller, more dramatic life of the common people, in this instance, the lives of children in London. Bringing together a wealth of evidence drawn from court records, literary sources, and books of advice, Hanawalt weaves a rich tapestry of the life of London youth during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Much of what she finds is eye opening. She shows for instance that--contrary to the belief of some historians--medieval adults did recognize and pay close attention to the various stages of childhood and adolescence. For instance, manuals on childrearing, such as "Rhodes's Book of Nurture" or "Seager's School of Virtue," clearly reflect the value parents placed in laying the proper groundwork for a child's future. Likewise, wardship cases reveal that in fact London laws granted orphans greater protection than do our own courts. Hanawalt also breaks ground with her innovative narrative style. To bring medieval childhood to life, she creates composite profiles, based on the experiences of real children, which provide a more vivid portrait than otherwise possible of the trials and tribulations of medieval youths at work and at play. We discover through these portraits that the road to adulthood was fraught with danger. We meet Alison the Bastard Heiress, whose guardians married her off to their apprentice in order to gain control of her inheritance. We learn how Joan Rawlyns of Aldenham thwarted an attempt to sell her into prostitution. And we hear the unfortunate story of William Raynold and Thomas Appleford, two mercer's apprentices who found themselves forgotten by their senile master, and abused by his wife. These composite portraits, and many more, enrich our understanding of the many stages of life in the Middle Ages. Written by a leading historian of the Middle Ages, these pages evoke the color and drama of medieval life. Ranging from birth and baptism, to apprenticeship and adulthood, here is a myth-shattering, innovative work that illuminates the nature of childhood in the Middle Ages.


Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-12-22

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 3110895447

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Earlier theses on the history of childhood can now be laid to rest and a fundamental paradigm shift initiated, as there is an overwhelming body of evidence to show that in medieval and early modern times too there were close emotional relations between parents and children. The contributors to this volume demonstrate conclusively on the one hand how intensively parents concerned themselves with their children in the pre-modern era, and on the other which social, political and religious conditions shaped these relationships. These studies in emotional history demonstrate how easy it is for a subjective choice of sources, coupled with faulty interpretations – caused mainly by modern prejudices toward the Middle Ages in particular – to lead to the view that in the past children were regarded as small adults. The contributors demonstrate convincingly that intense feelings – admittedly often different in nature – shaped the relationship between adults and children.


A History of Childhood

A History of Childhood

Author: Colin Heywood

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0745656811

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In this lively and accessible book, Colin Heywood explores the changing experiences and perceptions of childhood from the early Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century. Heywood examines the different ways in which people have thought about childhood as a stage of life, the relationships of children with their families and peers, and the experiences of young people at work, in school and at the hands of various welfare institutions. The aim is to place the history of children and childhood firmly in its social and cultural context, without losing sight of the many individual experiences that have come down to us in diaries, autobiographies and oral testimonies. Heywood argues that there is a cruel paradox at the heart of childhood in the past. On the one hand, material conditions for children have generally improved in the West, however belatedly and unevenly, and they are now more valued than in the past. On the other hand, the business of preparing for adulthood has become more complicated in urban and industrial societies, as the young face a bewildering array of choices and expectations. A History of Childhood will be an essential introduction to the subject for students of history, the social sciences and cultural studies.


Medieval Childhood

Medieval Childhood

Author: D. M. Hadley

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2014-08-31

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1782976981

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The nine papers presented here set out to broaden the recent focus of archaeological evidence for medieval children and childhood and to offer new ways of exploring their lives and experiences. The everyday use of space and changes in the layout of buildings are examined, in order to reveal how these impacted upon the daily practices and tasks of household tasks relating to the upbringing of children. Aspects of work and play are explored: how, archaeologically, we can determine whether, and in what context, children played board and dice games? How we may gain insights into the medieval countryside from the perspective of children and thus begin to understand the processes of reproduction of particular aspects of medieval society and the spaces where childrenÍs activities occurred; and the possible role of children in the medieval pottery industry. Funerary aspects are considered: the burial of infants in early English Christian cemeteries the treatment and disposal of infants and children in the cremation ritual of early Anglo-Saxon England; and childhood, children and mobility in early medieval western Britain, especially Wales. The volume concludes with an exploration of what archaeologists can draw from other disciplines _ historians, art historians, folklorists and literary scholars _ and the approaches that they take to the study of childhood and thus the enhancement of our knowledge of medieval society in general.


Childhood in History

Childhood in History

Author: Reidar Aasgaard

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-20

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1317168933

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Inquiring into childhood is one of the most appropriate ways to address the perennial and essential question of what it is that makes human beings – each of us – human. In Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Aasgaard, Horn, and Cojocaru bring together the groundbreaking work of nineteen leading scholars in order to advance interdisciplinary historical research into ideas about children and childhood in the premodern history of European civilization. The volume gathers rich insights from fields as varied as pedagogy and medicine, and literature and history. Drawing on a range of sources in genres that extend from philosophical, theological, and educational treatises to law, art, and poetry, from hagiography and autobiography to school lessons and sagas, these studies aim to bring together these diverse fields and source materials, and to allow the development of new conversations. This book will have fulfilled its unifying and explicit goal if it provides an impetus to further research in social and intellectual history, and if it prompts both researchers and the interested wider public to ask new questions about the experiences of children, and to listen to their voices.


Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Author: Albrecht Classen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 9783110184211

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Earlier theses on the history of childhood can now be laid to rest and a fundamental paradigm shift initiated, as there is an overwhelming body of evidence to show that in medieval and early modern times too there were close emotional relations between parents and children. The contributors to this volume demonstrate conclusively on the one hand how intensively parents concerned themselves with their children in the pre-modern era, and on the other which social, political and religious conditions shaped these relationships. These studies in emotional history demonstrate how easy it is for a subjective choice of sources, coupled with faulty interpretations - caused mainly by modern prejudices toward the Middle Ages in particular - to lead to the view that in the past children were regarded as small adults. The contributors demonstrate convincingly that intense feelings - admittedly often different in nature - shaped the relationship between adults and children.


Rituals of Childhood

Rituals of Childhood

Author: Ivan G. Marcus

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 030015674X

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In medieval times, when a Jewish boy of five began religious schooling, he was carried from home to a teacher and placed on the teacher's lap. He was then asked to recite the Hebrew alphabet and lick honey from the slate on which it was written, to eat magically inscribed cooked peeled eggs and cakes, to recite an incantation against a demon of forgetfulness, and then to go down to the riverbank with the teacher, where he was told that his future study of the Torah, like the rushing river, would never end. This book--Ivan Marcus's erudite and novel interpretation of this rite of passage--presents a new anthropological historical approach to Jewish culture and acculturation in medieval Christian Europe. Marcus traces ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman elements in the rite and then analyzes it from different perspectives, making use of narrative, legal, poetic, ethnographic, and pictorial sources, as well as firsthand accounts. He then describes contemporary medieval Christian images and initiation rites--including the eucharist and the Madonna and child--as contexts within which to understand the ceremony. He is the first to investigate how medieval Jews were aware of, drew upon, and polemically transformed Christian religious symbols into Jewish counterimages in order to affirm the truth of Judaism and to make sense of living as Jews in an intensely Christian culture.


The Child in British Literature

The Child in British Literature

Author: A. Gavin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-02-20

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0230361862

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The first volume to consider childhood over eight centuries of British writing, this book traces the literary child from medieval to contemporary texts. Written by international experts, the volume's essays challenge earlier readings of childhood and offer fascinating contributions to the current upsurge of interest in constructions of childhood.