Out of the Mouths of Babes
Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature
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Out of the Mouths of Babes
Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature
A wide-ranging study of the rich questions raised by speaking infants in medieval French literature.
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.
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.
Table of Contents
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