Table of Contents

1. Children's Poetry from the Middle Ages 2. Growing Up 3. Words, Rhymes, and Songs 4. Manners Maketh Man 5. Stories 6. School Days Further Reading Notes Index

About the Author

Nicholas Orme is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of many books, including Medieval Schools and Medieval Children.

Reviews

"[Nicholas Orme] has provided a new impetus for studying the worlds of medieval children and has helped challenge the consensus...that 'childhood' itself was an invention of modernity... This is a charming assembly of texts."-Seth Lerer,Speculum(July 2015) "Nicholas Orme's selections are interesting and wide-ranging and demonstrate the sense of play that he associates with childhood in the period. Fleas, Flies, and Friars has a kind of charm that will appeal to nonacademic readers as well as students and teachers. The translations are excellent and readable. They are also remarkably joyful. Orme's enthusiasm for the sounds of the poems is wonderful and will appeal to all readers who like nursery rhymes."-Rebecca Krug, University of Minnesota, author of Reading Families "Fleas, Flies, and Friars is marked by Nicholas Orme's straightforward commentary, the quality of the translations, the method of their organization, and the guides to further reading and notes at the end of the manuscript. The very oddity of the texts is compelling to a modern reader, since they work against any sentimental assessment of medieval childhood. From the perspective of these texts, medieval childhood seems very much like a preparation for medieval adulthood; children were fully aware of the harshness of daily reality, of the duties and strengths required in daily life."-Lynn Staley, Colgate University, author of Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II