Laura Schilitz Book Report

The various essays comprising Children in Colonial America look at different characteristics of childhood in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Children coming to the American colonies came from many different nations and through these essays, authors analyze children from every range of social class, race, and ability in order to present a broad picture of childhood in these times. While each essay deals with an individual topic pertaining to childhood, they all combine to provide a strong argument that children were extremely valued in society, were not tiny adults, and were active participants in society.

Personally, when thinking of the middle Ages, I tend to have the misconception that it is a period of darkness with no progress. However, R.W. Southern’s book, ‘The Making of the Middle Ages’, offers an in depth study of the development of history in the world today. Observing that this book was published during the 1950s, Mr. Southern’s interpretation of the ‘Middle Ages’ was very distinctive in comparison to other historians of his time. He explores the significance of the Middle Ages as a separate sector in the study of history by which the audience will notice that previous categories of studied history is set aside, as we are no longer focusing on the usual ‘Classical Greece’ and ‘Rome’

Medieval literature is involved in the school classroom for a very long time. Medieval literature is very important and even though it's old it offers many interesting stories and life lessons. There are many medieval literature works- Beowulf, the author tales, and more. The film of Monty Python and the holy grail combines all the medieval literature and satirises them all. The Monty Python film mocks and satirizes a lot of the important themes in the medieval literature. Among the many themes it satirizes, the theme of Chivalric Code and Knightly Behavior is the most prevalent. Many themes are repeated over and over again and it is easy to draw conclusions from what we read in class to the movie. Through this essay I will show these examples.

“Lanval” by Marie de France and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer are both medieval romances that put a knight on trial by a queen’s court for his treatment of a lady. Throughout the course of this paper, readers will get the opportunity to travel back in time to the Middle Ages and that during the twelfth-century women were superior to men, specifically in their relationships and marriages; however, today men dominant individuals, especially in working world.

During the Middle Ages, there was a period called the Dark Ages, which were obviously a time of non intelligence, lawlessness, and warfare. 500-100 A.D. marked when The Dark Ages happened. It gained the nickname based on how everyone was so corrupt and uneducated, they did not realise their actions were extremely vulgar. A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age is a book on the history of the Middle Ages as a whole and how their thinking was very backwards and flawed. The author, William Manchester splits this book up into three parts; “The Medieval Mind,” “The shattering,” and “One Man Alone.” The “Medieval Mind” explores many different aspects of the Middle ages and how their mindlessness caused much destruction to their future. This book shows in explicit detail the most important events that affected the Middle Ages. Although the Middle ages was the beginning of a new era of inventions, knowledge, and intelligence, these times were very difficult. There was much hardship because of the people's obsession with power, the church, violence, warfare, and their strange myths.

As time goes on the aspects and views of individuals change, which is usually caused by their surroundings. These aspects can generally be displayed in various physical forms and actions . During the duration of the 1500’s to the 1700’s major events lead to many to Europeans alter their religious and cultural views which can clearly be seen through their techniques of childrearing. The techniques displayed the mindset of the individuals as views based on the corrupt church transformed into new ideas of enlightenment.

Living in the medieval time period was not as glamorous as it is often portrayed; peasants and serfs led hard lives, however, kings, lords, and knights lived lavishly and at the expense of those under them. In this paper you will read about all of these lifestyles, as well as the castles in which these lords and kings lived in. Mainly castle designs, fortifications, and siege tactics will be revealed to you; yet there are several sections, dealing with the lifestyles of the above mentioned, leading up to that.

Maria Tatar begins her chapter, “Just Desserts: Reward-and-Punishment Tales”, with a testimony of the manner in which parents were encouraged to instruct their children through the breaking of their will in which to save their souls. These instructions carry forward into the weaving of fairy tales in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in a way that Tatar describes as having “stretched the limits of the parental and pedagogical imagination of those times” (53). It is this imagination that drove the punishments of children within fairy tales to the extreme, not to be carried out in rage towards the child, but what a child represents in contrast to the strict and seemingly tame adult civilization.

Child neglect and abandonment, as well as their consequences and negative effects , lead to devastating effects on children’s development. Abandoned and betrayed children lose the trust toward the adult world. The Brothers Grimms’ “Hansel and Gretel” is the story of two children who were twice betrayed and left to die by their own father. The father, on the other hand, is a partner in crime of the stepmother, and both parents choose, in the time of famine, to save their lives instead of their children. Alone in the forest, the symbol of life’s cruelty, the children need to kill or to be killed. They need to learn how to stand up for themselves and for each other, without the parental love, guidance, and nurturing. In the process of this premature emotional growth, the children should make difficult, but not necessarily moral choices, causing them to lose their innocence. Basile’s “Cinderella Cat” is the tale of a young motherless princess named Zezolla, who in the process of growing up encounters people teaching her how to kill without remorse. She must use anything at her disposal, in order to survive and climb from rags to riches. In the adult world that betrays them, Zezolla, Hansel and Gretel learn how to kill, fight, seduce, and to stand up for themselves. In this process, of being deprived of parental love/moral support, they lose their innocence, acquire independence, and gain a problematic set of moral values.

In conclusion, Bouchard comprises an ordered narrative. She is adamant about her thesis, providing primary sources that link evidence as to why noble families of the Middle Ages correspond with the male-line. This does not exclude women from lineages as she supports her claim that women are not inferior to males if her relatives are superior to those of her husband and his kin. In this, she also includes evidentiary support for father-son inheritance. She depicts examples of this presenting how important it was to have these inheritances, for women could not obtain these. Men and women’s families of the centuries discussed are constantly evolving due to marriages, alliances, blood-ties, and political positions. The debate between “old” versus

The Book Catherine of Aragon written by Garrett Mattingly is about the life of Catherine of Aragon, the princess of Spain during the late 1400’s and early 1500’s. The book begins with Catherine’s life as a small child, before she became Queen. The first section of the book talks of Catherine’s upbringing as a princess and includes details on the duties of her and her siblings. A good example of this is described on page 17 as it shows how Catherine and her sisters had to be educated on their bloodline, heraldry and genealogy as well as dancing, cooking, and horsemanship which were the interests of her class) .

I propose a detailed analysis about the Middle Ages and the events that has taken place during that time period. I will talk about the wars and more important events that have occurred. I will find my research through primary and secondary resources. I have picked my first two resources to start off my research. First I will be using http://www.lordsandladies.org/. Secondly I will be using http://history-world.org/midbritain.htm.

We study the middle ages in the classroom to see how humans evolved and how much of an impact in has on society today. The middle ages were all about “...celebrating the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.”(History.com Staff) How their empires created these systems that we follow. We learn and understand how the feudal system works and how our system is reflected off of that today. We also learn about the roles of women, how society treats them, and how their social status has changed over the years. Different writers, artists, and authority figures walked the earth in that era, and many do not know how they have affected the way we think today. The middle ages is also known as the “Medieval” period happened in the fourteenth century. The knights, princesses, squires, and merchants, who we all know and read about as children, all play an important role in the middle ages.We learn to understand their roles in society, and make choices based on how our roles changed through the years We reflect on these eras today, and this is where every choice and action started that we all make in society now.

longest and It helps us understand women’s role during the middle ages and is evidence that the women’s role was rapidly and everchanging during that time. During the 1300 century women were known for their relation to men not their own identify or social roles or occupations.

During the Middle Ages, the feudal system divided society into a strict hierarchy based on social class. Kings were of the highest social class and offered protection to loyal noblemen and women who were of a lower rank. The feudal system relied on people adhering to its social structure, which allowed those in power to go uncontested in their social roles. As a subset of the feudal system, families assumed a similar hierarchal structure, in which men were granted power over their wives’ agency. The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry is a late fourteenth-century courtesy book which highlights the feudal hierarchy. Throughout the book, a noble father recounts the Fall story to his daughters to teach them proper noble behaviour in marriage. In the Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, the father uses Eve’s disobedience to demonstrate the dangers of vanity and the importance of being loyal to one’s husband. In this sense, the Fall highlights feudal society’s concern with complying to the power structure to ensure that those at the top of the hierarchy remain in power.