Medieval Songs of Innocence and Experience: The Adult Writer and Literature for Children

Abstract

Medieval Songs of Innocence and Experience:The Adult Writer and Literature for Children Bennett A. Brockman (bio) "Sing nou, moder," seide that child,"Wat me sal be-falleHere after wan i cum to eld—So don modres alle."1 —from a commonplace book of 1372 The medieval no less than the modern age assumes the child's innocence—his lack of experience in the adult world—and attempts to prepare him for entering that world by explaining its modes of operation and the rationale or the myths which underlie or account for them. The adult effort, and the felt need which prompts it, is vividly indicated by one modern child's book which explains that death—perhaps the fact most difficult for the child to come to terms with—is simply a part of the natural scheme of things: "After burial a body, which is composed of nearly three-quarters water, soon changes. The soft tissues break down and disappear first. Within a year only bones are left."2 Put into its place in the clinical context of a twentieth-century scientific outlook, death is supposed to become comprehensible and hence less terrifying. The medieval poem quoted above reflects the same basic assumption, which all ages have perhaps held: that the adult must initiate the child into an understanding of the world they both must inhabit. But the striking thing, as students of children's literature have noted before, is that only in relatively recent times has there been a separate literature for children designed to introduce them to their world. Before the seventeenth century adults and children shared the same literature (a condition we are perhaps approaching again, for good or ill, in the television programs which both adults and children watch). Curiously, it may be that medieval children gained from their exposure to "adult" literature what modern children fail to gain from much literature designed exclusively for their use: an account of "the way things are." The modern children's book frequently conceives of its mission in just those terms. But ironically, because modern children's books generally are designed exclusively for children, they can fulfill that mission only in very limited ways. A central reason for the limited success of the modern children's book is suggested by some of the earliest English and American children's literature, which used the fear of death and damnation to encourage apprentices and other children to attend Sunday school—to get them out of shipyards and factories where they might damage property. Just as crudely manipulative as these relatively modern stories are the fifteenth-century stories which the Knight of La Tour-Landry [End Page 40] compiled for the edification of his daughters. It seems in fact that when societies separate children's from adult literature they do so primarily to use the child's book as an instrument to mold his behavior.3 Twentieth-century children's books are less likely to employ threats to shape behavior (not many tales of fierce bad rabbits are written), but instead hold out rewards for proper conduct. In Nine Rabbits and Another, a fairly typical example, sharing a cramped room with an apparently derelict rabbit yields a handsome profit: the derelict turns out to be the Easter bunny, who leaves his benefactors Easter baskets filled with candy.4 The problem is not simply that children's literature, when separated from adult literature, tends to be didactic. The real question concerns the nature of the didacticism—the substance of the educative content of a work. A separate literature for children presents its points so narrowly that it betrays its proper mission. Children's books convey useful information, indulge the imagination, delight the senses, and inculcate socially acceptable behavior. These services are vital parts of the child's maturation. But they fail to provide—in ways satisfying to an adult or to a perceptive child—the deep accounting for human experience which the adolescent especially needs. Like modern children's literature, the great body of medieval literature is notoriously didactic. There are in fact medieval tales which parallel Nine Rabbits. The Good Samaritans therein usually discover they have entertained angels unaware, or they...

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