Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance : The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality

Meanings of Fatherhood in Late‐Medieval Montpellier: Love, Care and the Exercise of Patria Potestas

“…Rather than focusing on purely material aspects, scholarship has now turned its interest to the loving and caring aspects of fatherhood. 10 Being a father and the emotions associated with fatherhood contributed to the definition of masculine and paternal identities. 11 We will discuss in the third section the way in which poverty could influence the social status of a father.…”

Children and Childhood in the Middle Ages

“…A collection of essays that has served as a catalyst for further revision of the paradigm of Philippe Ariès is Childhood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Albrecht Classen (A. Classen, ed., 2005). A collection of essays that has served as a catalyst for further revision of the paradigm of Philippe Ariès is Childhood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Albrecht Classen (A. Classen, ed., 2005).…”

“…For scholars such as Classen (2005), Karras (2003), Orme (2001), and Newman (2007), literary study, informed by the work of social historians, challenges the understanding of our ability now to write a macro-history on this topic and instead provide an avenue for understanding the subtle nuances of the topic. In the midst of these newer methods of study, Shulamith Shahar, working from a psychological paradigm, finds a good deal of precedents in medieval texts for some of what we might today call a "psychological awareness" of childhood and adolescence (Shahar 1990, 1-42).…”

Brilliance of a Fire: Innocence, Experience and the Theory of Childhood

“…The allusion to a vaguely realised pre‐Romantic backdrop to the rise of innocence has a potential to open up lines of enquiry into the area that few commentators have pursued 5 . Probing the late Renaissance interest in the transcendentalism of childhood not only converges with new post‐Ariès assessments of the emergence of the modern institutions of childhood (Somerville, 1992; Classen, 2005; Cunningham, 2006), it also holds forth the prospect of reconnecting critical awareness with a wider and more ancient historical grammar of innocence embracing the cultural work of a range of discursive genres, including theology, philosophy, mysticism and poetics. This task, it can be seen, furthers the genealogical endeavour by problematising an accepted critical dogma and excavating the hidden history of the elusive idea of innocence in order more effectively to comprehend its sources and evaluate its continuing influence.…”