5. Children and Literature in Late Medieval England

As far as his literary experience was concerned, the child in late medieval England seems to have fared better than his twentieth-century counter-part. The medieval child had access not only to literature written expressly for children (which was invariably didactic) but also, more importantly, to the literature we habitually think of as adult literature: the drama, the romances, the lyrics, the sermons and saints' lives, even Lydgate, Gower, Chaucer, and the Pearl-poet, if we can trust the few descriptions of medieval literary audiences which have come down to us. It appears that we can say accurately, although perhaps a bit startlingly, that all the literature of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England is children's literature. A corollary question, which must be pursued elsewhere, is whether the literature of medieval England is still vital as literature for children.

To consider the literature of late medieval England children's literature we have first to realize, as Mr. and Mrs. McMunn remind us, that the High Middle Ages did not exclude children, even very young children, from occasions during which they could hear romances read, legends recited, or lyrics sung, or witness plays performed. Philippe Ariès must be right in this respect: the medieval child did become an adult at the age of seven, and even earlier, as far as his literary experience was concerned. His general participation in adult activities must certainly have involved him in literary occasions.

The scholarly investigations of Dieter Mehl, Derek Pearsall, and A. C. Baugh,¹ while not undertaken with this end in mind, enable us to be more specific about this passive participation of the medieval child in his literary world, at least the world of romance. In the fourteenth century the romance audience was typically a wealthy bourgeois household in the city or a provincial aristocratic one (Mehl). Baugh shows that in addition the medieval child could expect to hear romances read or recited in alehouses, in marketplaces, at various popular assemblies or ceremonial occasions, as well as in the baronial hall during meals or at other times. It would probably have been as difficult for the medieval child to evade the romance as to evade the sermon or the cycle plays, which we know were performed in cities, towns, and villages throughout England.

Mr. McMunn has argued that literacy was much more common in the Middle Ages than has been generally assumed. There is evidence in the literature which suggests that children were indeed active participants in the Middle English literary world. They read for themselves, and they read aloud to others. The English redactor of Yvain carries over without demur Chrétien's description of a maiden who "red that thai myght here, / A real romance in that place" (line 3088). In Sir Tristrem, Isonde is presented as a king's daughter "that gle was lef to here / & romance to rede aright" (l. 1257f.). One of the Harleian lyrics, the "Fair Maid of Ribbesdale," praises a maiden who has "a mury mouht to mele / with lefly rede lippes lele / romaunz forto rede." Conceivably, reading romances privately or aloud was not confined to girls. Sir Eger in Eger and Grimé reads a romance to the gathered company; he and presumably real gentlemen like him must have learned to read while children and have exercised their ability privately and publicly.

As far as I have been able to determine, however, we have no record before 1477 of an adult actually encouraging a child to read secular literature. In this year Caxton printed the Book of Curtesye, written by one of Lydgate's disciples for "lytyl John," who must have been still a child since the author promises him more advice when he is older. The writer counsels little John to read Gower's Confessio Amantis, "so ful of fruyt, sentence, and langage" (l. 329); Hoccleve on the princely virtues (st. 51f); and Lydgate, whose excellence he dares not praise (st. 53-58). He especially urges the virtues of Chaucer, "fader and founder of ornate eloquence / That elumened has alle our bretayne" (st. 48). "His langage," he...