Childhood and Emotion Across Cultures 1450-1800 [Hardcover]

How did children feel in the Middle Ages and early modern times? How did adults feel about the children around them? This collection addresses these fundamental but rarely asked questions about social and family relations by bringing together two emerging fields within cultural history  childhood and emotion  and provides avenues through which to approach their shared histories.

Bringing together a wide range of material and sources such as court records, self-narratives and educational manuals, this collection sheds a new light on the subject. The coverage ranges from medieval to eighteenth-century Europe and North America, and examines Catholic, Protestant, Puritan and Jewish communities. Childhood emerges as a function not of gender or age, but rather of social relations. Emotions, too, appear differently in source-driven studies in that they derive not from modern assumptions but from real, lived experience.

Featuring contributions from across the globe, Childhood and Emotioncomes a step closer to portraying emotions as they were thought to be experienced by the historical subjects. This book will establish new benchmarks not only for the history of these linked subjects but also for the whole history of social relations.

Introduction, Claudia Jarzebowski (Free University of Berlin, Germany)/Thomas Max Safley (University of Pennsylvania, USA)  Part I: Communities  1. Model Children and Pious Desire in Early Enlightenment Philanthropy,Kelly Whitmer (The University of the South at Sewanee, USA)  2. For the Pleasure of Babies and the Sorrow if Children : Children and Emotions in Early Modern Jewish Communities, Tali Berner (The Program in Research of Child and Youth Cultures, Tel Aviv University, Israel)  3.Growing up in VOC-Batavia: Transcultul•