Writing Through Boyhood in the Long Eighteenth Century : Age, Gender, and Work / Chantel Lavoie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lavoie, Chantel M., 1970- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Boys in literature.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Literature and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (245 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Newark, DE : University of Delaware Press, [2024]

Summary:

Writing through Boyhood in the Long Eighteenth Century explores how boyhood was constructed in different creative spaces that reflected the lived experience of young boys through the long eighteenth century—not simply in children’s literature but in novels, poetry, medical advice, criminal broadsides, and automaton exhibitions. The chapters encompass such rituals as breeching, learning to read and write, and going to school. They also consider the lives of boys such as chimney sweeps and convicted criminals, whose bodily labor was considered their only value and who often did not live beyond boyhood. Defined by a variety of tasks, expectations, and objectifications, boys—real, imagined, and sometimes both—were subject to the control of their elders and were used as tools in the cause of civil society, commerce, and empire. This book argues that boys in the long eighteenth century constituted a particular kind of currency, both valuable and expendable—valuable because of gender, expendable because of youth.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Time for Boys

1 The Boy in Breeches: Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) Growing into Gender

2 The Boy in School: Ellenor Fenn’s Rhetorical Tools in School Dialogues, for Boys (1783)

3 The Boy in the Machine: Pierre Jaquet-Droz’s Automaton, the Writer (1774)

4 The Boy in the Chimney: Sweeps’ Apprentices, Suffering Bodies, and Jonathan Swif

5 The Boy in the Gallows: Crime, Punishment, Broadsheets, Afterlives

6 The Boy in the Printing Press: Printer’s Devils and Upward Mobility

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-64453-321-9

1-64453-322-7

OCLC:

1404326561