دانلود کتاب The Social and Cultural Worlds of Elite Valencian Youth, 1300–1500

This study examines the socio-cultural position of adolescents and youths – those between the approximate ages of fifteen and twenty-five years old – within aristocratic and patrician society in late medieval Valencia. It investigates how young people were defined and described by adult society, as well as how young people understood their own relationship with sources of adult authority – sometimes acquiescing to it and sometimes actively resisting it – and concludes that, far from being an insignificant or abbreviated period of transition from childhood to adulthood, adolescence was a vital and protracted period of preparation that was believed to require special vigilance and attention from adult society to ensure that adolescents and young adults became “successful” members of society.

The study begins, in Part I, by investigating how adolescence was understood and defined by the Valencian legal code, the Furs, which collectively codified adolescence as a period of “quasi-adulthood.” Then, the second part examines how adolescence and youth were constructed in works of prescriptive literature composed by ecclesiastical and secular authors in late-medieval Valencia, with particular attention given to the writings of the Franciscan writer Francesc Eiximenis, as well as Ramon Llull’s Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria, and Joanot Martorell’s chivalric epic, Tirant lo Blanc. These sources highlight the importance of paternal or adult supervision of a child’s education, while also giving insight into societal constructions of aristocratic masculinity and femininity, aristocratic honor, masculine aggression, and socially acceptable forms of sexual expression between young men and women. Finally, Part III of this study explores how the values expounded by the sources used in Parts I and II were expressed by young people within society. Using legal records (court cases and judicial records) and documentary materials, this section analyzes how young members of aristocratic households, particularly squires and the younger members of aristocratic families, were socialized into the culture of violence, honor, and “proper” sexual comportment by adult society and, consequently, reproduced these values in their own lives.