Becoming Human: The Matter of the Medieval Child.

Author / Editor
Mitchell, J. Allan

Title
Becoming Human: The Matter of the Medieval Child.

Published
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Physical Description
xxx, 249 pp.

Description
Studies the ontogeny (rather than ontology) of medieval western humanness, focusing on gestation, birth, childhood, and the social and cultural coming-into-being of the child. Links various aspects of "posthumanist, ecological, and materialist thought," and locates medieval antecedents to postmodern questions and theories of humanness and becoming. Examines a variety of medieval objects and texts, with particular attention to Middle English poetry, including discussion of "literary miniaturization" and childishness in Th and PrT; toys and science in Astr, and the dining etiquette and cultural materialization of the Franklin's "table dormant" (GP 1.353).

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism
Tale of Sir Thopas
Prioress and Her Tale
Franklin and His Tale
Treatise on the Astrolabe