Master-Servant Childhood A History of the Idea of Childhood in Medieval English Culture

Master-Servant Childhood offers a new understanding of childhood in the Middle Ages as a form of master-servant relation embedded in an ancient sense of time as a correspondence between earthly change and eternal order. It challenges the misnomer that children were 'little adults' in the Middle Ages and corrects the prevalent misconceptions that childhood was unimportant, unrecognized or disregarded. The book argues for the value of studying childhood as a structure of thought and feeling and as an important avenue for exploring large scale historical changes in our sense of what it is to be and become human.

Patrick Ryan is Associate Professor of Childhood and Social Institutions at Kings University College at Western University, Canada.

1. Husbands, Wives, and the Language of Patriarchy
2. Boys, Girls, and the Practices of Servitude
3. Childhood Without Adulthood
4. Age, Generation, and the Logic of Correspondence
5. The Master-Servant Sense of Being in Time