The knowledge of childhood in the German Middle Ages

Winner of the 1994-95 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for studies in Germanic languages and literatures James A Schultz has brought a historiographic approach to nearly two hundred Middle High German texts—narrative, didactic, homiletic, legal, religious, and secular. He explores what they say about the nature of the child, the role of inherited and individual traits, the status of education, the remarkable number of disruptions these children suffered as they grew up, the rites of passage that mark coming of age, the various genres of childhood narratives, and the historical development of such narratives.