Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood

Drawing on art history, literary studies and social history, the essays in this volume explore a range of intersections between gender and constructions of childhood in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries in Italy, England, France and Spain. The essays are grouped around the themes of celebration and loss, education and social training, growing up and growing old. Contributors grapple with ways in which constructions of childhood were inflected by considerations of gender throughout the early modern world. In so doing, they examine representations of children and childhood in a range of sources from the period, from paintings and poetry to legal records and personal correspondence. The volume sheds light on some of the ways in which, in the relations between Renaissance children and their parents and peers, gender mattered. Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood enriches our understanding of individual children and the nature of familial relations in the early modern period, as well as of the relevance of gender to constructions of self and society.

Naomi J. Miller is Professor of English and the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College, USA, and Naomi Yavneh is Director of the University Honors Program and Professor of Language and Culture at Loyola University New Orleans, USA.

Contents: Introduction: early modern children as subjects: gender matters, Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh; Part 1 Conceptualizing Childhood: Loss and Celebration: A comfortable farewell: child-loss and funeral monuments in early modern England, Patricia Philippy; Parents, children, and responses to death in dream structures in early modern England, Carole Levin; Lost and found: Veronese's Finding of Moses, Naomi Yavneh; 'Certein childeplayes remembred by the fayre ladies': girls and their games, Katherine R. Larson. Part 2 Imprinting Identity: Education and Social Training: The facts of Enfance: Rabelais, Montaigne, Paré, and French Renaissance paediatrics, Marie Rutkoski; 'Our little darlings': Huguenot children and child-rearing in the letters of Louise de Coligny, Jane Crouchman; Anne Dormer and her children, Sara Mendelson; 'Obey and be attentive': gender and household instruction in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Kathryn M. Moncrief; Producing girls on the English stage: performance as pedagogy in Mary Ward's convent schools, Caroline Bicks. Part 3 Transitional Stages: Growing Up and Growing Old: Boys to men: codpieces and masculinity in 16th-century Europe, Carole Collier Frick; Marvell, boys, girls and men: should we worry?, Diane Purkiss; Martyrs and minors: allegories of childhood in Cervantes, Emilie L. Bergmann; Portraiture and royal family ties: kings, queens, princes, and princesses in Caroline England, Julia Marciari Alexander; 'Second childishness' and the Shakespearean vision of ideal parenting, Gregory M. Colón Semenza; Select works cited; Index.