Description: Employing a variety of creative, interdisciplinary approaches, contributors examine early modern Spanish children's lives, the role of children within the larger family, adult perceptions of childhood, images of children and childhood in art and literature, and the ways in which children and childhood were vulnerable and in need of protection. The volume analyzes children and childhood in a wide range of contexts including the royal court, the noble family, and orphanages.
Review Quotes: 'A very significant interdisciplinary collection of consistently high-caliber essays. Although it is focused on Spain, I believe that the approach and example of these essays will set the research agenda for studies of early modern childhood.' Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, author of Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister 'This collection provides a good overview of the current research on children and childhood in early modern Spain ... will be useful to a wide array of scholars, including scholars of early modern Spain, children, and gender across the disciplines.' Renaissance Quarterly 'When these essays are taken as a whole, the play between their interdisciplinary sources and methods reveals the many ways in which children and childhood were important to the legal, social, and economic institutions of Early Modern Spain while simultaneously uncovering the depth of emotion that surrounded both children and the daunting task of parenting.' Childhood in the Past