Chaucer and the Child

Eve Salisbury

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781137436375
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book addresses portrayals of children in a wide array of Chaucerianworks. Situated within a larger discourse on childhood, Ages of Mantheories, and debates about the status of the child in the late fourteenthcentury, Chaucer's literary children—from infant to adolescent—offer ameans by which to hear the voices of youth not prominently treated insocial history. The readings in this study urge our attention to literarychildren, encouraging us to think more thoroughly about the Chauceriancollection from their perspectives. Eve Salisbury argues that the child isneither missing in the late Middle Ages nor in Chaucer's work, but is, rather, fundamental to the institutions of the time and central to thepoet's concerns.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Child Chaucer and the Play of Imagination
• Chapter 3: Infantasy and the Silent Child
• Chapter 4: Pueritia: Boys and Girls
• Chapter 5: Adolescentia: “For Youthe and Elde is Often at Debaat”
• Chapter 6: Troubling Stages of Life: Child-Woman, Child-Man
• Chapter 7: An Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index