1. The Literacy of Medieval Children

Abstract

1. The Literacy of Medieval Children William Robert McMunn (bio) Before turning to the literacy of medieval children, I would like to state a few preliminary definitions as a general introduction. All of us on the panel agree that "children's literature" did not exist in the Middle Ages. During the medieval period, there was no literary genre designed expressly for the entertainment of children. Instead, all literature was for people of all ages. Hence, we must distinguish carefully between three related but essentially different concepts—children's literature, child characters in literature, and childhood as a social institution. Children's literature is literature designed primarily for the entertainment of children, as opposed to adults. There were many didactic works written for medieval students, but even the most entertaining of these, such as AElfric's Colloquy, in which different characters describe in Latin their occupational duties, subordinate entertainment to instruction. Child characters occur frequently in modern children's literature, but they also occur in literature written for a general audience of children and adults. The presence of child characters does not prove that a work containing them is children's literature, nor does the absence of child characters prove that the work would not appeal to children. All societies recognize that infancy is a different phase of life from adulthood, but not all societies have recognized childhood, that period between infancy and adulthood, as a separate phase of life with a distinctive psychology and social role. Some scholars, as we shall hear from Dr. Barstow, have maintained that there was, in effect, no separate phase of life in medieval society that would correspond to childhood as we know it today. The existence of a separate genre of literature for children would be good evidence for believing that the society which produced that literature recognized such a separation. [End Page 36] But the absence of children's literature in the Middle Ages does not necessarily prove that childhood as we know it did not exist then. However, the nonexistence of medieval children's literature is certainly compatible with the thesis that children in the Middle Ages were thought to be simply miniature adults. To learn more about whether the concept of childhood existed in the Middle Ages, we naturally turn to literature. The social roles played by child characters in medieval literature can give us valuable evidence concerning the social roles played by real children in medieval society. Mrs. McMunn and Dr. Brockman will discuss this for medieval France and England, respectively. The relationships among these three concepts—children's literature, children in literature, and the role of childhood in society—should be kept in mind during all of our discussion this afternoon. It is commonly believed that most children, and indeed most adults, were illiterate during the Middle Ages, unless they belonged to the clerical orders. Hence, it is often assumed that children had no access to the written literature of the period, though of course they would have heard the orally recited legends and heroic tales, and the stories of religious edification, that were available to all. The frequent allusions to this oral literature during the Middle Ages demonstrate that oral literature must have been an important medium of entertainment and instruction then, just as it has been since the invention of language. No child characters are explicitly present at Hrothgar's feast in Beowulf, but Germanic and Anglo-Saxon children must have heard stories like the tragic episode of the sons of Finn, told by the scop on that occasion.1 Such exciting stories embodied and transmitted the code of personal loyalty that was a dominant social and ethical force in ancient and medieval Germania. More direct evidence of the availability of oral literature to medieval children is given by the biographer of the ninth-century English King Alfred the Great. He tells us that young Alfred listened "day and night" to the oral recitation of Old English heroic poems and memorized them; even before he learned to read, he won a book as a prize from his mother by memorizing its contents before his brothers could do so.2 Although the illiterate child was fascinated as much...

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