Kindheit und Emotion: Kinder und ihre Lebenswelten in der Europäischen Frühen Neuzeit

Abstract

‘The history of childhood has been, since its beginnings, a history of emotions and it still is’ (p. 1). So begins Claudia Jarzebowski’s impressive study of children’s Lebenswelten in early modern Europe, which originated as the author’s Habilitationsschrift in the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Indeed, this assertion—that the history of children and childhood is a history of emotions—is a crucial starting point for Jarzebowski’s endeavour. Central to her project is the idea that attention to children’s perspectives, experiences and related contemporary debates among adults about what children actually are and what they need is not an ancillary way of approaching early modern social ‘logics’ (p. 3). Rather, she asserts that these perspectives and debates are in fact central to understanding the period more generally and that they become especially legible to us through approaches that carefully historicize both childhood and emotions at the same time, or make analysis of the relationships between these two categories a priority.