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Centuries of Childhood--Philippe Ariès [link]

Posted by Manstuprator on 2024-June-16 01:39:31, Sunday

Sorry-- This post lacks correct text formatting. I don't have time to do it right. Any errors were introduced by copying/pasting from the sources and then my not having proofread the text...

Kids are sexual beings, and in the past this was recognized, and even very young people were not excluded from adult society -- or from exposure to adult sexual themes -- as they are today. This book (and the other I mention) give a lot of useful information on the life and times of kids in the past and up to the present, and how our (so-called) "modern" -- and often very wrong -- ideas of the nature of children developed.


Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life
by Philippe Ariès

BOOK BLURB:

“The theme of this extraordinary book is the evolution of the modern conception of family life and the modern image; of the nature of children. Aries traces the evolution of the concept of childhood from the end of the Middle Ages, when the child was regarded as a small adult, to the present child-centered society, by means of diaries, paintings, games, and school curricula. Ironically, he finds that individualism, far from triumphing in our time, has been held in check by the family, and that the increasing power of the tightly-knit family circle has flourished at the expense of the rich-textured communal society of earlier times. Translated from the French by Robert Baldick. **

Chapter V (page 100): From immodesty to innocence describes how young people in daily life were exposed to adult sexual themes, unlike today's overprotection and insistance on the "innocence" of young people.


Table of Contents:

INTRODUCTION

PART one: THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD

I THE AGES OF LIFE 15

II THE DISCOVERY OF CHILDHOOD 33

in children’s dress 50

IV A MODEST CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF GAMES AND PASTIMES 62

V FROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE IOO

CONCLUSION: THE TWO CONCEPTS OF CHILDHOOD 128

PART two: SCHOLASTIC LIFE

I Medieval SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD 137

II A NEW INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE 155

III THE ORIGINS OF THE SCHOOL CLASS 17 6

IV THE PUPIL’S AGE 1 89

V THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE 241

VI FROM DAY-SCHOOL TO BOARDING-SCHOOL 269

VII THE ‘LITTLE SCHOOLS' 286

VIII THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN 315

CONCLUSION: SCHOOL AND THE DURATION OF CHILDHOOD 329

Part three: THE FAMILY

I PICTURES OF THE FAMILY 339

II FROM THE MEDIEVAL FAMILY TO THE MODERN FAMILY 365

CONCLUSION: THE FAMILY AND SOCIABILITY 405

CONCLUSION 411

NOTES 419

INDEX 441


FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (French: L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime; English: lit. "The Child and Family Life in the Ancien Régime[1]) is a 1960 book on the history of childhood by French historian Philippe Ariès known in English by its 1962 translation.[2] It is considered the most famous book on the subject,[2] and it is known for its argument that the concept of "childhood" is a modern development.

Synopsis
The book argues that childhood as an idea has changed over time.[2] It covers the concepts of childhood, adult–child relations, and childhood experience across cultures and time periods.[2] His most well-known sources are medieval paintings that show children as small adults.[3] Ariès argues that childhood was not understood as a separate stage of life until the 15th century, and children were seen as little adults who shared the same traditions, games, and clothes.[3]
Its most famous conclusions are that "childhood" is a recent idea,[3][4] and that parenting in the Middle Ages was largely detached.[4] Ariès argues the following: nuclear family bonds of love and concern did not exist in the era, and children died too often to become emotionally attached.[3][4] Children were not treated as delicate or protected from sexuality.[3] They spent time with adults outside of family structures, and were not always segregated to school and family structures.[2] Often they would be fostered to others as domestic servants.[3]
Despite the book's fame for its thesis, Centuries of Childhood focuses more on the beginnings of systematized schooling and the decline of a common public sociability.[3] This focus extends from the author's greater criticism of modern life and its schism of social elements he saw to be once united: "friendship, religion, [and] profession".[3] In this way, Ariès did not believe modern families adequately replace the role of common public community.[3]

Criticism
There has been widespread criticism of the methods that Ariès used to draw his conclusions about the role of childhood in early modern Europe. One of his most noted critics was the historian Geoffrey Elton. Elton's main criticism of Ariès is paraphrased in Richard J. Evans's book on historiography, In Defence of History: "...in everyday life children were indeed dressed differently to adults; they were just put in adult clothes to have their portraits painted."[5]
That is to say that Ariès took early modern portraits as an accurate representation of the look of early modern families whereas a lot of the clients would use them to improve their status.
The assertion that the medieval world was ignorant of childhood has undergone considerable attack from other writers.[6]
Further criticism of Ariès is found in an article from 1992 by Harry Hendrick for the Journal of the Economic History Society. Within the article, entitled “Children and Childhood,” Hendrick lists four criticisms of Ariès's work:
"Firstly that his data are either unrepresentative or unreliable. Secondly that he takes evidence out of context, confuses prescription with practice, and uses atypical examples. Thirdly, that he implicitly denies the immutability of the special needs of children, for food, clothing, shelter, affection and conversation. Fourthly, that he puts undue emphasis on the work of moralists and educationalists while saying little of economic and political factors."[7]

Legacy
"... in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist."
Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood[2]

Writing for The American Historical Review in 1998, Hugh Cunningham states that the book's influence "remains profound" after forty years, especially with respect to medieval childhood.[2] He added that Ariès successfully persuaded his readers that the experience of childhood and its treatment as a stage of life had evolved across time and place.[2] The book began the study of the history of childhood, which led to monographs on histories of individual aspects of childhood.[8] A misleading translation of the French sentiment ("feeling") into "idea" became one of the translation's best known lines, "In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist", and led to a "mini-industry" of medieval scholars rebutting this false thesis.[2]
"It cannot be over-emphasized that there is nothing to be said for Aries's view of childhood in the middle ages. ... Aries's views were mistaken: not simply in detail but in substance. It is time to lay them to rest."
Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children[3]
The popular view of Ariès' thesis was dismantled over the coming decades.[4] Slate's Stephen Metcalf describes an "anti-Arièsist" cottage industry whose most notable practitioners include historians Steven Ozment and Nicholas Orme.[3] Orme wrote Medieval Children, a book dedicated to refuting the Ariès thesis,[3] which reviewers agree it did.[3][4] Orme concluded that "medieval children were ourselves, five hundred or a thousand years ago" and that their parents genuinely cherished and grieved for their children, similar to modern parents.[4] Despite these decades of refutation, the Ariès thesis persists in non-academics, who associate medieval children with "miniature adults".[3]
The book had considerable academic influence[3] and began a trend in the humanities where studied ideas are seen as caused by culture rather than by nature, biology, or self.[3] Metcalf described Centuries of Childhood as a book "that, virtually on contact, sets the mind on fire" for its imagination, especially as written in 1960, a time of childhood's expansion.[3] Metcalf asserted that Ariès' method of cultural causes influenced Michel Foucault's thinking, which has since touched most academic disciplines.[3]

SEE ALSO:
https://slate.com/culture/2002/03/the-fight-over-when-childhood-began.html
... comparing Orme's book with Ariès'

AND:
Medieval Children--Nicholas Orme
“This Is A History Of Children In England From Anglo-saxon Times To The Sixteenth Century - The First Of Its Kind. Starting At Birth, It Shows How They Were Named And Baptised, And Traces The Significance Of Birthdays And Ages. This Leads To An Account Of Family Life, Including Upbringing, Food, Clothes, Sleep And The Plight Of The Poor. The Misfortunes Of Childhood Are Chronicled, From Disablement, Abuse, And Accidents To Illness, Death, And Beliefs About Children In The Afterlife.--jacket. Arriving -- Family Life -- Danger And Death -- Words, Rhymes, And Songs -- Play -- Church -- Learning To Read -- Reading For Pleasure -- Growing Up.


Two very informative works that are required reading for thinking BoyLovers, IMHO...

What do you think?

M.

READ Centuries of Childhood ONLINE:
https://archive.org/details/CenturiesOfChildhood-PhilippeAries/mode/1up?view=theater

DOWNLOADS:

Medieval Children--Nicholas Orme
https://annas-archive.org/md5/408db43d9e8c17c47f78039ab0d3bd6d

Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life
https://archive.org/download/CenturiesOfChildhood-PhilippeAries/Philippe_Aries_Centuries_of_Childhood_A_Social_Bookos.org.pdf
OR:
https://archive.org/download/CenturiesOfChildhood-PhilippeAries/Philippe_Aries_Centuries_of_Childhood_A_Social_Bookos.org.epub
... which contains OCR errors...

AND (VARIOUS FORMATS, WITH/WITHOUT OCR ERRORS):
https://annas-archive.org/search?q=centuries+of+childhood


READ Centuries of Childhood ONLINE:
https://archive.org/details/CenturiesOfChildhood-PhilippeAries/mode/1up?view=theater
  • (https site) https://archive.org/details/CenturiesOfChildhood-PhilippeAries/mode/1up?view=theater
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