Ancient and Medieval Rites of Passage (Volume I) (A History of Young People in the West) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067440405X ISBN 13: 9780674404052

Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 1997

Synopsis

However swiftly it passes, youth is always with us, a perpetual passing phase, an apprenticeship to the myriad ways of the world, subject of panegyrics and diatribes, romances and cautionary tales from antiquity to our day. This two-volume history is the first to present a comprehensive account of what youth has been in the West and what it has meant through the ages. Brought together by Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt, a company of gifted historians and social scientists traces the changing character and status of young people from the gymnasia of ancient Greece to the lycées of modern France, from the sweatshops of the industrial revolution to the crucibles of Nazi youth.

Monumental in its scope, minute in its attention to detail, A History of Young People takes us into the sensational rituals surrounding youth in Roman antiquity (such as the Lupercalia, with its nudity and whipping) and into the chivalric trials awaiting the privileged young of the Middle Ages. Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Michel Pastoureau explore the elusive question of what defines youth, a concept that over time has reached from infancy to the age of forty. Elliott Horowitz and Renata Ago consider the young in the context of the family--within the different worlds of European Judaism and Catholicism through the Renaissance. Sabina Loriga takes us through three centuries of military experience to temper and complicate our assumptions about the youthful face of war. Michelle Perrot focuses on working-class youth, and Jean-Claude Caron on the young at school. The obedient and the rebellious are here, the cherished and the sacrificed, the children catapulted into adult responsibility, the adults who have yet to forsake the protections of childhood. What emerges in this history as never before is a vast, richly textured picture of youth as a changing constant of culture, society, economics, politics, and art, and as a uniquely complex experience of acculturation in every life.

About this title

About the Authors

Giovanni Levi is Professor of Economic History at the University of Venice.

Jean-Claude Schmitt is Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Reviews

In this latest volume by the publishers that brought us the five-volume History of Private Life (LJ 11/15/87) and History of Women in the West (LJ 4/1/94), European academics Levi and Schmitt and a host of others offer a history of youth. These 18 articles, produced by European social historians and art historians, give short shrift to some time periods, such as 500-1500 and the 18th century, and to areas such as the British Isles, Iberia, Scandinavia, and the Western Hemisphere, which receives only 23 pages. Religion is either ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. (A major exception is the fine piece on "The Worlds of Jewish Youth in Europe.") The focus throughout is on France and Italy. Each author defines "youth" differently, showing it to be a social and cultural construct; in addition, the approaches and sources are vastly different, and styles vary from the light and breezy to the dense and elephantine. Yet these articles do provide valuable insights on the literary, artistic, and legal material on youth in selected times and places and in illuminating prevailing cultural values. For research libraries.?Bennett D. Hill, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067440405X
• ISBN 13: 9780674404052
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Levi Giovanni, Schmitt Jean-Claude