Nicholas
Orme.
Medieval Children.
New Haven: Yale U.P.,
2001.
xii,387pp,
illustrated.
Hardback ISBN
0300085419.
Publisher's
recommended price £25.00
This is a
history
of children in England from Anglo-Saxon times to the sixteenth century
- the first of its kind.
Starting
at birth,
it shows how they were named and baptised, and traces the significance
of birthdays and ages. This leads to an account of family life,
including
upbringing, food, clothes, sleep and the plight of the poor. The
misfortunes
of childhood are chronicled, from disablement, abuse, and accidents to
illness, death, and beliefs about children in the afterlife.
Further
chapters
explore the oral culture of medieval children (words, rhymes, and
songs),
play, religion, learning to read, and literature for children. Finally,
we see how they grew up, began to work, came of age, and experienced
sexuality.
The
result is
a vivid recreation of what it was like to be young, which reveals the
central
importance of children in English medieval history for the first time.
The traditional view of a past in which there was no childhood is shown
to lack any foundation. On the contrary, children were recognised as
special
and different, and possessed their own flourishing culture, much of it
like that of young people today.
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