Childhood and Emotion ─ Across Cultures 1450-1800

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 Emotion comes 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.

Claudia Jarzebowski is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, working in the field of social history, the history of emotions and early modern global history. She has published various articles and books on topics ranging from incest to childhood.

Thomas Max Safley is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in the economic and social history of early modern Europe, he has published more than a dozen books covering the history of marriage and the family, the history of poverty and charity and the history of labour and business.