Early Modern Childhood is a detailed and accessible introduction to childhood in the early modern period, which guides students through every part of childhood from infancy to youth and places the early modern child within the broader social context of the period.
Drawing on the work of recent revisionist historians, the book scrutinises traditional historiographical views of early modern childhood, challenging the idea that the concept of ‘childhood’ didn’t exist in this period and that families avoided developing strong affections for their children because of the high death rate. Instead, this book reveals a more intricately detailed character of the early modern child and how childhood was viewed and experienced. Divided into five parts, it brings together the work of historians, art historians and literary scholars to discuss a variety of themes and questions surrounding each stage of childhood, including the household, pregnancy, infancy, education, religion, gender, illness and death. Chapters are also dedicated to the topics of crime, illegitimacy and children’s clothing, providing a broad and varied lens through which to view this subject.
Exploring the evolution in understanding of the early modern child, Early Modern Childhood is the ideal book for students of the early modern family, early modern childhood and early modern gender.
PART I: CONTEXTS
1. Locating the Early Modern Child
Anna French
2. The Early Modern Family
Katie Barclay
3. The Household
Tara Hamling
PART II: BEGINNINGS
4. Conception, Pregnancy and Birth
Daphna Oren-Magidor
5. Infancy
Anna French
6. Schools and Education
Alan Ross
PART III: IDENTITIES
7. Protestants
Alec Ryrie
8. Catholics
Lucy Underwood
9. Gender
Min Ji Kang
PART IV: ADVERSITY
10. Crime and Disorder
Paul Griffiths
11. Illness and Death
Adriana Benzaquén
12. Illegitimacy
Katie Barclay
PART V: REPRESENTATIONS
13. Drama
Katie Knowles
14. Clothing
Maria Hayward
15. Portraiture
Jane Eade
Biography
Anna French is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Liverpool. She is author of Children of Wrath: Possession, Prophecy and the Young in Early Modern England (2015), general secretary of the European Reformation Research Group and Director of the Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.