Childhood, Memory and Autobiography in Holland: From the Golden Age to Romanticism (Early Modern History: Society and Culture)

About the Author RUDOLF DEKKER is Professor at the Faculty of History and Art of the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is the author of The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe and co-editor of Journal de Magdalena van Schinne (1786-1805).He has contributed to several Dutch and international journals, including an article on seventeenth-century humour in the French journal Annales. He has also recently published guides to diaries, autobiographies, travel journals and other egodocuments in Dutch archives. Product Description Between the 17th and 19th centuries auto-biographers and diarists invented new ways to write about childhood and children. At the same time, pedagogical ideas about child-rearing changed. This book looks at the connection between these developments. Egodocuments can bring the past alive, and allow us to sketch six intimate portraits. The second part of the book concentrates on the changes. Childhood became more highly valued as a phase of life. Children were taken more seriously. This is shown in chapters on child's play, punishment, wet-nursing and independence. Around 1800, in diaries, parents more openly grieved about the loss of a child, which indicates both a change of literary conventions and changes in the way emotions were felt and expressed. Finally, autobiographers wrote more and differently about their early years, and developed new memory strategies. Autobiographical texts are discussed within a wider cultural setting, using paintings, poetry, pedagogical tracts and novels. This book makes clear how changes in autobiographical style, the concept of childhood and the working of human memory are connected. Review Review of the original Dutch version 'Uit de schaduw in't grote licht' 'An impressive investigation of Dutch childhood .... by carefully examining personal documents and their context, analyzing their genre, and a profound knowledge of the early modern period, Dekker tactfully draws conclusions and new perspective between the black and white legends of the family history debate.' - Benjamin Roberts, Paedagogica Historica, International Journal of the History of Education