ENGL 2810Y Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Early Modern Europe, Practical Education, Infante
17 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Introduction
the "ages of man” [sic]
1. Latin infans (literally “not speaking”) → “infant”: babies, children up to age 7
2. adolescence: 14 until 21, 28 or even 35
3. "youth” (prime of life): end of adolescence to age 45-50
4. old age (physical and mental decline, then death)
IMAGE: Boy punished by his teacher (fol. 214), Omne Bonum (British Library Royal 6 E VI), c.
1360-1375
• Aries seems wrong children treated just like adults
• rights & protections, rhymes & games
• 1300s: toys; school children with books designed for them
• printing press in England in late 1400s: books became affordable to larger numbers of
people
• 1700s: commercialization of publishing = mass marketing of books written for children
• Ariès: childhood as category “constructed” differently across time and cultures (no
“natural” or universal notion of childhood)
• Ariès: in Early Modern Europe, attitudes towards kids change, esp. among wealthier
families (first as memorials, by 1600s of living kids)
• Ariès: in France, upper class writers (mostly women) begin describing children as
delightful, fun, entertaining = a radical cultural shift
• emotional rather than rational/religious attitudes toward children
• Medieval parents obviously loved their kids, but didn’t express (or write about) this in
sentimental ways fashionable later in 1600s and 1700s
• 1700s: children seen as needing protection from harsh adult world
• way to safeguard them: moral and practical education
• early Middle Ages: Latin is language of education
• 1300s: English spoken & written by people in everyday lives; instructional books in
English
• no widespread, formal public school system in western Europe until Protestant
movements of 1600s
• monasteries & convents schools for clergy; admitted ordinary children
• late 1300s in some parts of England , schooling offered free
• no education of children from lower classes
• more education across classes = more writing aimed at kids
• 1700s: popular press, cheap editions of short books (called “chapbooks”) and pamphlets
• folk stories read aloud to others: earliest formation of Children’s Literature as genre
• Puritanism & Rationalism start dominating education (still see this influence!)
• warnings on hell, need for constant repentance & vigilance against sneakiness of Satan
• believed children prone to sin and in need of reformation
• kids shaped from young age into virtuous Christians to resist evil
