With Stacy Klein: Early Medieval Childhood, Parenting, and Family Structures

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Harvard English Dept. Medieval Colloquium

Organizer Name

Anna Kelner

Organizer Affiliation

Harvard Univ.

Presider Name

Anna Kelner

Paper Title 1

Ties that Bind: The Significance of Blended Families in France and England, 1100-1300

Presenter 1 Name

Randall Todd Pippenger

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Princeton Univ.

Paper Title 2

Modor's Boys: Mother-Son Relationships as Cautionary Tale in Beowulf

Presenter 2 Name

Melissa Filbeck

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Texas A&M Univ.

Paper Title 3

Fictional Parenting

Presenter 3 Name

Stacy S. Klein

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Rutgers Univ.

Start Date

11-5-2019 3:30 PM

Session Location

Bernhard 211

Description

Representations of children and parents often surface in early medieval literature, balking the commonly held supposition that medieval society, with its high rates of infant mortality and depictions of children as miniature adults, did not value childhood as a distinct life stage. This panel welcomes papers that discuss parents, children, and families in early medieval England from any angle, but which might respond to one or several of the following questions. How did Anglo-Saxon writers imagine reproductive technologies and family structures beyond the constraints of heterosexuality and the nuclear family? How did they depict alternative forms of parenting, such as fosterage, child oblation, or cross-species adoption? How do genealogical trees describe the relationship between humankind and nature? How do representations of children speak to broader philosophical or theological investigations of human vulnerability and productivity? Anna Kelner