Naomi Yavneh

Naomi J. Miller

While the relationships between parents and children have long been a staple of critical inquiry, bonds between siblings have received far less attention among early modern scholars. Indeed, until now, no single volume has focused specifically on relations between brothers and sisters during the early modern period, nor do many essays or monographs address the topic. The essays in Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World focus attention on this neglected area, exploring the sibling dynamics that shaped family relations from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany. Using an array of feminist and cultural studies approaches, prominent scholars consider sibling ties from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including art history, musicology, literary studies, and social history. By articulating some of the underlying paradigms according to which sibling relations were constructed, the collection seeks to stimulate further scholarly research and critical inquiry into this fruitful area of early modern cultural studies.

Sisters, Brothers and Others

Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World

Diane Purkiss

Building on recent critical work, this volume offers a comprehensive consideration of the nature and forms of medieval and early modern childhoods, viewed through literary cultures. Its five groups of thematic essays range across a spectrum of disciplines, periods, and locations, from cultural anthropology and folklore to performance studies and the history of science, and from Anglo-Saxon burial sites to colonial America. Contributors include several renowned writers for children. The opening group of essays, Educating Children, explores what is perhaps the most powerful social engine for the shaping of a child. Performing Childhood addresses children at work and the role of play in the development of social imitation and learning. Literatures of Childhood examines texts written for children that reveal alternative conceptions of parent/child relations. In Legacies of Childhood, expressions of grief at the loss of a child offer a window into the family’s conceptions and values. Finally, Fictionalizing Literary Cultures for Children considers the real, material child versus the fantasy of the child as a subject.

Literary Cultures and Medieval and Early Modern Childhoods

Focusing attention on the neglected area of relations between brothers and sisters during the early modern period, this volume explores the sibling dynamics that shaped family relations in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany. Using an array of feminist and cultural studies approaches, prominent scholars consider sibling ties from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives - including art history, musicology, literary studies, and social history - to articulate underlying paradigms according to which sibling relations were constructed.

Drawing on art history, literary studies and social history, the essays in this volume explore a range of intersections between gender and constructions of childhood in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries in Italy, England, France and Spain. The essays are grouped around the themes of celebration and loss, education and social training, growing up and growing old. Contributors grapple with ways in which constructions of childhood were inflected by considerations of gender throughout the early modern world. In so doing, they examine representations of children and childhood in a range of sources from the period, from paintings and poetry to legal records and personal correspondence. The volume sheds light on some of the ways in which, in the relations between Renaissance children and their parents and peers, gender mattered. Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood enriches our understanding of individual children and the nature of familial relations in the early modern period, as well as of the relevance of gender to constructions of self and society.

Naomi J. Miller

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