Abstract
Abstract The Western tradition of recognizing the change from childhood to puberty is one with deep roots. In the ancient physicians’ and philosophers’ division of life into four stages, adolescence was conceived of as hot and dry, as are summer and fire, and its humor was red choler. Youths, according to Bede, are “lean (even though they eat heartily), swift-footed, bold, irritable, and active.” Those who divided the life cycle into six stages according to the planets envisioned youth as Venus, which “implants an impulse toward the embrace of love.”1 The folkloric traditions, as well, included good descriptions of the transition period. “The Mirror of the Periods of Man’s Life” is primarily a vehicle for moralizing, but it also divides life into stages according to years and qualities. In the fourteenth year (puberty), “know liche of manhode he wynnes,” and throughout his early twenties the youth is a battleground for the struggle between the seven virtues and the seven sins. Reason dictates an education at Oxford or at the law, but lust has other ideas:
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