Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan
Book cover

Death, Emotion and Childhood in Premodern Europe

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Editors:
  1. Katie Barclay

    1. Australian Research Council, Centre for the History of Emotions, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Kimberley Reynolds

    1. School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics,, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  3. Ciara Rawnsley

    1. Australian Research Council, Centre for the History of Emotions, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Draws on original material to reappraise early-modern responses to the death of children
  • Recognises the significance of child death to early-modern families
  • Asks what these responses tell us about the place of children in society

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood (PSHC)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Small Graves: Histories of Childhood, Death and Emotion

    • Katie Barclay, Kimberley Reynolds
    Pages 1-24

  3. ‘he nas but seven yeer olde’: Emotions in Boy Martyr Legends of Later Medieval England

    • Andrew Lynch
    Pages 25-44

  4. Rhetorics of Death and Resurrection: Child Death in Late-Medieval English Miracle Tales

    • Philippa Maddern
    Pages 45-63

  5. Beholding Suffering and Providing Care: Emotional Performances on the Death of Poor Children in Sixteenth-Century French Institutions

    • Susan Broomhall
    Pages 65-86

  6. ‘Rapt Up with Joy’: Children’s Emotional Responses to Death in Early Modern England

    • Hannah Newton
    Pages 87-107Open Access

  7. Facing Childhood Death in English Protestant Spirituality

    • Alec Ryrie
    Pages 109-127

  8. Memorials and Expressions of Mourning: Portraits of Dead Children in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

    • Karin Sidén
    Pages 129-149

  9. Child-Killing and Emotion in Early Modern England and Wales

    • Garthine Walker
    Pages 151-171

  10. Grief, Faith and Eighteenth-Century Childhood: The Doddridges of Northampton

    • Katie Barclay
    Pages 173-189

  11. Responsibility and Emotions: Parental, Governmental and Almighty Responses to Infant Deaths in Denmark in the Mid-Eighteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth Century

    • Anne Løkke
    Pages 191-208

  12. Child Death and Children’s Emotions in Early Sunday School Reward Books

    • Merete Colding Smith
    Pages 209-228

  13. Childhood Death in Modernity: Fairy Tales, Psychoanalysis, and the Neglected Significance of Siblings

    • Chantal Bourgault du Coudray
    Pages 229-244

  14. Back Matter

    Pages 245-257
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book draws on original material and approaches from the developing fields of the history of emotions and childhood studies and brings together scholars from history, literature and cultural studies, to reappraise how the early modern world reacted to the deaths of children. Child death was the great equaliser of the early modern period, affecting people of all ages and conditions. It is well recognised that the deaths of children struck at the heart of early modern families, yet less known is the variety of ways that not only parents, but siblings, communities and even nations, responded to childhood death. The contributors to this volume ask what emotional responses to child death tell us about childhood and the place of children in society. Placing children and their voices at the heart of this investigation, they track how emotional norms, values, and practices shifted across the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries through different religious, legal and nationaltraditions. This collection demonstrates that child death was not just a family matter, but integral to how communities and societies defined themselves.



Chapter 5 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. 

Reviews

“The contributors offer an array of potential new approaches, sources, and interpretations, and open up many new and exciting avenues of research, an invitation that is perhaps this volume’s most important contribution.” (Margaret B. Lewis, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 73 (1), 2020)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Australian Research Council, Centre for the History of Emotions, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Katie Barclay

  • School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics,, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Kimberley Reynolds

  • Australian Research Council, Centre for the History of Emotions, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

    Ciara Rawnsley

About the editors

Katie Barclay is DECRA Fellow in the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She is the author of Love, Intimacy and Power, and numerous articles on family life and emotions.

Kimberley Reynolds is an award-winning author who founded the UK’s National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature and co-edited one of the first studies of representations of childhood death.

Ciara Rawnsley works at the University of Western Australia, and has published on Shakespeare and Emotions. After completing her PhD, she worked at the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions. 

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation