Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature
Autor Professor Julie Singeren Limba Engleză Paperback – 10 mar 2025
Medieval literature is full of strange moments when infants (even fetuses) speak. In Out of the Mouths of Babes, Julie Singer explores the unsettling questions raised by these events, including What is a person? Is speech fundamental to our humanity? And what does it mean, or what does it matter, to speak truth to power?
Singer contends that descriptions of baby talk in medieval French literature are far from trivial. Through treatises, manuals, poetry, and devotional texts, Singer charts how writers imagined infants to speak with an authority untainted by human experience. What their children say, then, offers unique insight into medieval hopes for universal answers to life’s deepest wonderings.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780226838021
ISBN-10: 0226838021
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 7 halftones
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.41 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
ISBN-10: 0226838021
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 7 halftones
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.41 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
Notă biografică
Julie Singer is professor of French at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of two books, including Representing Mental Illness in Late Medieval France: Machines, Madness, Metaphor.
Cuprins
List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Universal Alterity of the Infant
Chapter One: Voices from the Womb
Chapter Two: Signs of Life
Chapter Three: Nurture, the Domestic, and the Foreign
Chapter Four: Interrogating Innocence
Chapter Five: Mute Children in the Time of Miracle
Conclusion: Knowing Infancy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Introduction: The Universal Alterity of the Infant
Chapter One: Voices from the Womb
Chapter Two: Signs of Life
Chapter Three: Nurture, the Domestic, and the Foreign
Chapter Four: Interrogating Innocence
Chapter Five: Mute Children in the Time of Miracle
Conclusion: Knowing Infancy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Recenzii
“Writing with verve and crystal-clear prose, Singer explores how literary representations of infancy may articulate concerns central to medieval understandings of voice, speech, and song; of the family and social relations; of law and justice; of disability, family, and care. Often surprising, always compelling, Out of the Mouths of Babes is both theoretically rich and a joy to read."
“Meticulously researched and impressive in scope, Out of the Mouths of Babes investigates not only the place of childhood in medieval culture but also thornier, contemporary questions surrounding the beginnings of life, subjectivity, and personhood made more vibrant by Singer’s careful exploration of their medieval stagings. Her work reshapes our understanding of infancy and childhood—even embryology—in the medieval period and helps us better understand what it means to be a person, in any age.”
“In this remarkable book, Singer shows how much infants, despite being defined as speechless, have to say about some of the most towering and complex intellectual problems facing medieval, and modern, society. Theoretically daring, cleverly structured, and engagingly written, Out of the Mouths of Babes teases out the surprising importance of an effectively ignored subject, and it does so with a unique combination of rigor, expertise, and creativity.”