In Service and at Home: Didactic Texts for Children and Young People, c 1400-1600

Abstract

Until recently, literary texts produced either in manuscript or printed form between c. 1400 and 1600 were assumed to neglect the interests of children and young people. A selection of didactic texts from this period, however, discusses children and attitudes to the time of 'childhood', with these motifs relevant to both elite secular or ecclesiastical households. The interests of children and young people are addressed within these didactic examples, which in turn reveal developments occurring in the creation of non-elite, nuclear family audiences primarily in the late fifteenth century.