Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Transcription conventions
- Introduction
- 1 Courtesy Poems
- 2 Readers
- 3 Virtue and Vice
- 4 Sixteenth-Century Books
- 5 The School
- Conclusion
- Appendix A Appendix A: English Vernacular Courtesy Poems
- Appendix B Incunabula
- Appendix C Sixteenth-Century Books
- Appendix D Educational Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
4 - Sixteenth-Century Books
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Transcription conventions
- Introduction
- 1 Courtesy Poems
- 2 Readers
- 3 Virtue and Vice
- 4 Sixteenth-Century Books
- 5 The School
- Conclusion
- Appendix A Appendix A: English Vernacular Courtesy Poems
- Appendix B Incunabula
- Appendix C Sixteenth-Century Books
- Appendix D Educational Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
‘Lerne: or be lewde folowe the proued mannes advyse’
By the late fifteenth century there was a growing ideal within literature that boys and girls should be subject to moral, virtuous and courteous guidance. Caxton's publications told of young people being ‘fed with virtue’ and ‘removed from vice’. These books defined their responsibilities towards socialising both sexes as the instilling of courteous and virtuous manners. Before this the common theme in courtesy literature for boys had represented socialisation in multi-directional class lines, although it always began with an explicit focus on elite behaviour. Quite distinct differences between poems for boys and those for girls show that there had been a well-developed sense of moral female behaviour prior to this. By the close of the fifteenth century the archetype accentuating moral characteristics was emerging more strongly in material for boys. In the previous chapter Caxton's publications, with their parallel accounts of virtue and sin, were shown as substantially contributing to this development in response to social and political turmoil in England. What, then, of the literature in the century after Caxton, which circulated at a time when disruption to the social and political order was attributable to religious turbulence? Bryson has argued that manners are evidence of changing social strategies. This chapter addresses the nature of sixteenth-century strategies in the light of childhood upbringing, domestic household policy and religious values.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, c. 1400–1600 , pp. 127 - 158Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012