Anglo-Saxon Childhood, Adolescence, and Education
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Georg-August-Univ. Göttingen
Organizer Name
Andreas Lemke, Winfried Rudolf
Organizer Affiliation
Georg-August-Univ. Göttingen, Georg-August-Univ. Göttingen
Presider Name
Winfried Rudolf
Paper Title 1
Laments for the Living: Dying Parents and Surviving Children in Anglo-Saxon Literature
Presenter 1 Name
Stacy S. Klein
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Rutgers Univ.
Paper Title 2
Naming the Anglo-Saxon Child: Ethnicity, Semantics, and Cultural Change
Presenter 2 Name
Leonard Neidorf
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Harvard Univ.
Paper Title 3
"Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth”: Parent-Child Litigation in Later Anglo-Saxon England
Presenter 3 Name
Andrew Rabin
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of Louisville
Start Date
8-5-2014 1:30 PM
Session Location
Bernhard 158
Description
"Medieval art until about the twelfth century did not know childhood or did not attempt to portray it." This statement by Phillipe Ariès (1962) has dominated scholarship on medieval infancy and adolescence for some decades, finding some counteraction only in recent years, and with restriction to certain areas of medieval Europe. While archeaological evidence has been surveyed in some detail (e.g. Crawford, 1999), this session aims at foregrounding the role of children and teenagers in Anglo-Saxon literature, and especially those texts which are not necessarily known as straightforwardly canonical. We attempt to present new evidence which demonstrates as much Anglo-Saxon interest in the creation and development of human life in its early stages as is usually indentified in notions of transience and death in Old English literature. The aim is to reach a more refined understanding of the triad of infantia – pueritia – adolescentia, concepts which were not unequivocally understood by medieval authors and scholars themselves. Uniting historical, legal, liturgical and educational writings as well as palaeographical evidence, this session hopes to open up a new debate on the social history of Anglo-Saxon children, their literary roles, their vulnerability and protection, liability and education.
Andreas Lemke, Winfried Rudolf
Anglo-Saxon Childhood, Adolescence, and Education
Bernhard 158
"Medieval art until about the twelfth century did not know childhood or did not attempt to portray it." This statement by Phillipe Ariès (1962) has dominated scholarship on medieval infancy and adolescence for some decades, finding some counteraction only in recent years, and with restriction to certain areas of medieval Europe. While archeaological evidence has been surveyed in some detail (e.g. Crawford, 1999), this session aims at foregrounding the role of children and teenagers in Anglo-Saxon literature, and especially those texts which are not necessarily known as straightforwardly canonical. We attempt to present new evidence which demonstrates as much Anglo-Saxon interest in the creation and development of human life in its early stages as is usually indentified in notions of transience and death in Old English literature. The aim is to reach a more refined understanding of the triad of infantia – pueritia – adolescentia, concepts which were not unequivocally understood by medieval authors and scholars themselves. Uniting historical, legal, liturgical and educational writings as well as palaeographical evidence, this session hopes to open up a new debate on the social history of Anglo-Saxon children, their literary roles, their vulnerability and protection, liability and education.
Andreas Lemke, Winfried Rudolf