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Visions of My Youth: Representations of the Childhood of Medieval Visionaries
Author(s) -
Voaden Rosalynn,
Volf Stephanie
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
gender and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-0424
pISSN - 0953-5233
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0424.00205
Subject(s) - eleventh , vision , narrative , fifteenth , spirituality , early childhood , developmental psychology , psychology , history , gender studies , childhood memory , sociology , art , ancient history , anthropology , literature , medicine , psychiatry , cognition , physics , alternative medicine , pathology , acoustics , semantic memory
This article is based on visionary narratives and vitae of twenty‐seven female and thirteen male visionaries from Britain and Europe, from the late eleventh to the early fifteenth century. Across this chronological and geographical span, the differences between the childhood representations of male and female visionaries are shaped by prevailing beliefs about the nature of men and women. Male visionaries rarely include reminiscence of their childhood in their narratives, while women offer childhood memories relatively consistently. For male visionaries, childhood seems irrelevant in terms of their adult spirituality. For women, childhood reminiscences reaffirmed their association with the purity of virgin childhood.