The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society 1150-1650

While a lot of excellent work has been carried out in the past four decades on premodern children and childhood, few scholars have focused on post-pubescent youth in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The seventeen essays in this volume seek to redress this imbalance by offering a sampling of the research currently underway in this field and of the various questions and methodologies that could be useful in the study of “teenagers” in the 13th-17th centuries. Several key issues serve as sign-posts for the collection. The first is the question of terminology and definitions. The second is the ritual role given to youth in what was, in most cases across Europe, a gerontocracy. The third is the question of education. The fourth is the fascination young people have for the military. The fifth is the irrepressible interest they have for sex. And the last section looks at the inevitable problem of teens in trouble, be it medical, social, or legal. There is no unifying methodology in this volume. The collection is not meant to argue in favour of a particular school, but in favour of a new look, from a variety of angles, at a little studied area. The eclecticism of this volume thus offers a tantalizing array of entry points into the question of adolescence in pre- and early modern times.

KONRAD EISENBICHLER teaches Renaissance Studies and Italian at the University of Toronto. His volume The Boys of the Archangel Raphael. A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411-1785 (Toronto, 1998) was awarded the Howard R. Marraro Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association.

REVIEWS
Renaissance and Reformation, 26.3 (2002), pp. 43–45. Reviewed by Margery A. Ganz.
Renaissance Quarterly, 57.1 (2004), pp. 289–291. Reviewed by Margaret L. King.
The Sixteenth Century Journal, 35.1 (2004), pp. 219–220. Reviewed by Christopher R. Corley.
University of Toronto Quarterly, 74.1 (2004-2005), pp. 387–389. Reviewed by Carla Freccero.