Master-Servant Childhood : A History of the Idea of Childhood in Medieval English Culture

An interdisciplinary synthesis that offers a new understanding of childhood in the Middle Ages as a form of master-servant relation embedded in an ancient sense of time as a correspondence between earthly change and eternal order. Master-Servant Childhood offers a new understanding of childhood in the Middle Ages as a form of master-servant relation embedded in an ancient sense of time as a correspondence between earthly change and eternal order. It challenges the misnomer that children were 'little adults' in the Middle Ages and corrects the prevalent misconceptions that childhood was unimportant, unrecognized or disregarded. The book argues for the value of studying childhood as a structure of thought and feeling and as an important avenue for exploring large scale historical changes in our sense of what it is to be and become human Acknowledgements vii Wickberg’s Door: Childhood and Structures of Thought 1 1 Husbands, Wives and the Language of Patriarchy 25 2 Boys, Girls and the Practices of Servitude 46 3 Childhood Without Adulthood 63 4 Generation, Age and the Logic of Correspondence 82 5 The Master-Servant Sense of Being in Time 107 Select Bibliography 127 Index 129