Literary Cultures and Medieval Early Modern Childhoods

Building on recent critical work, this volume offers a comprehensive consideration of the nature and forms of medieval and early modern childhoods, viewed through literary cultures. Its five groups of thematic essays range across a spectrum of disciplines, periods, and locations, from cultural anthropology and folklore to performance studies and the history of science, and from Anglo-Saxon burial sites to colonial America. Contributors include several renowned writers for children. The opening group of essays, , explores what is perhaps the most powerful social engine for the shaping of a child. addresses children at work and the role of play in the development of social imitation and learning. examines texts written for children that reveal alternative conceptions of parent/child relations. In , expressions of grief at the loss of a child offer a window into the family’s conceptions and values. Finally, considers the real, material child versus the fantasy of the child as a subject.