The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society 1105-1650 edited by Konrad Eisenbichler (review)

Abstract

1OOARTHURIANA Konrad eisenbichler, ed., ThePremodern Teenager: Youth in Society1105—i6$o. Essays and Studies 1. Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2002. Pp. ix, 349. isbn: 0-7727-2018-5. $45. This collection ofessays attempts to discuss the question of youth' in medieval and early modern society between 1150 and 1650. The age group that lived between adolescence and full adulthood, first identified and discussed by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, receives an interesting set oftreatments in this book, which despite its general title concentrates very heavily on Renaissance Italy. Editor Konrad Eisenbichlersays the collection 'draws our attention to an age group that has generally been ignored by the scholarlycommunity' (p. 4). In concentrating on the age of some ofthe actors in historical events, the essays seek to emphasize and illuminate the qualities of adolescence in pre-modern Europe. This agenda proves to be an interesting way oflooking—once again—at artisans, servants, elites, knights, and other social groups. The first section, 'Identifying Youths: Terminology and Sub-Culture,' contains three articles coveringtheways inwhich teenaged male Italians, both Christian and Jewish, were identified and identified themselves in the early modern period by the use ofspecific terminology and clothingstyles. Similarly, the second section, 'Rituals ofYouth,' has three articles that explore behavior. Ottavia Niccoli's study, 'Rituals ofYouth: Love, Play and Violence inTridentine Bologna' discusses various activités, such as stone-throwing, which were associated withjuveniles; the other two articles in this section, byVirginiaA. Cole and Robert Zajkowsky, are concerned with the ritualized upbringing ofprinces, in these cases Edward II and HenryVI ofEngland. The third section, 'Educating the Young,' picks up on this theme with three articles on the training ofyoung men as knights and as students and the portrayal ofsuch training in literature. The last three sections, 'Teenaged Soldiers,' 'Sexand Sexuality,' and 'Teens inTrouble,' offer particularly interesting treatments of the specific duties and restrictions placed upon young men and women in the early modem period. In these articles, the social duties of young upper-class men and women—to fight, on the one hand, and to reproduce, on the other—play against each other in varied ways. In 'Young Knights underthe Feminine Gaze,' Ruth Mazo Karras shows how the ideals ofknighthoodboth shaped the behavior ofyoung men and dictated the responses oftheir young female admirers,whosedesireswere thenexpectedto leadthem into thesocial ritualsofcourtship andmarriage.Thesexualityofyoungwomengetsparticuladystrongtreatmentinseveral articles in this section. Ursula Potter's reinterpretation ofJuliet in 'Greensickness in Romeo andJuliet. Considerations on a Sixteenth-Century Disease ofVirgins,' provides a fascinating rationale for the puzzling behavior ofJuliet's father toward her in the play. Furthermore, Fiona Harris Stoerz's discussion of 'Sex and the Medieval Adolescent' makes clear that medieval and early modern thinkers viewed adolescent sexuality as volatile and potentially destructive. I find it interesting that many ofthe writers Stoerz introduceswere more concernedwith the activities ofyoung males thanyoung females; in this case, it seems, the comparative freedom enjoyed by young men meant more danger to their fragile chastity. REVIEWS??? The book includes some truly beautiful color illustrations and a good index. Each article is followed by its own bibliography. It should be suitable for upper-level undergraduates and above, and will lend itselfvery well to courses on gender. The sensitive ways in which the articles deal with the construction and interpretation of masculinity in the early modern period would provide an excellent foil for more female-centered studies of the same period. Those scholars who have found themselves wondering about the elusive stage between child and adult will also appreciate this book. BELLE S. TUTEN Juniata College john Howe and Michael wolfe, eds., Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Phce in Western Europe. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. Pp. ix, 237. isbn: 0-8130-2479-x. $59.95. The impressive range of essays in this volume combats two fundamental misconceptions that scholars of the Middle Ages may not even realize they hold. The first view is that, as in the Arthurian romances that so many of us teach, the Middle Ages were a time when the boundaries between nature and culture were firm and in which the forest or wasteland always remained a looming presence, populated by uncanny Others and undifferentiated by quotidian human experience...