Overview

Writing through Boyhood explores how boyhood was constructed in different creative spaces that reflected the lived experience of young boys through the long eighteenth century-not simply in children's literature but in novels, poetry, medical advice, criminal broadsides, and automaton exhibitions. The chapters encompass such rituals as breeching, learning to read and write, and going to school. They also consider the lives of boys such as chimney sweeps and convicted criminals, whose bodily labor was considered their only value, and who often did not live beyond boyhood. Defined by a variety of tasks, expectations, and objectifications, boys-real, imagined, and sometimes both-were subject to the control of their elders, and used as tools in the cause of civil society, commerce, and empire. This book argues that boys in the long eighteenth century constituted a particular kind of currency, both valuable and expendable-valuable because of gender, expendable because of youth.

Full Product Details

Author:   Chantel Lavoie
Publisher:   University of Delaware Press
Imprint:   University of Delaware Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.481kg
ISBN:  

9781644533208

ISBN 10:   1644533200
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   10 November 2023
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Audience:   College/higher education ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Time for Boys 1 The Boy in Breeches: Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) Growing into Gender 2 The Boy in School: Ellenor Fenn’s Rhetorical Tools in School Dialogues, for Boys (1783) 3 The Boy in the Machine: Pierre Jaquet-Droz’s Automaton,  the Writer (1774) 4 The Boy in the Chimney: Sweeps’ Apprentices, Suffering Bodies, and Jonathan Swift 5 The Boy in the Gallows: Crime, Punishment, Broadsheets, Afterlives 6 The Boy in the Printing Press: Printer’s Devils and  Upward Mobility Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index

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Author Information

Chantel Lavoie is a full professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication at the Royal Military College of Canada. Her first monograph was Collecting Women: Poetry and Lives, 1700–1770 (2009). She has also published two collections of verse: Where the Terror Lies (2012) and This Is about Angels, Women, and Men (2021), and her first historical novel, about chimney sweeps in the eighteenth century, is forthcoming. She lives in Kingston, Ontario. 

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