Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe
Ozment, a professor of ancient and modern history at Harvard University, has researched diaries, letters, fiction, and even woodcuts to present a picture of pre-industrial family life in Europe in the Middle Ages. He discusses such themes as working women (in late medieval Cologne, women's guilds of yarn makers, gold and silk embroiders, and silk makers were among the city's most labor-intensive and highly paid) and women's place in religion and society. He examines the practice of contraception (condemned by the church and justified by the laity), parent-child relations, infanticide, wet-nursing, and parental advice to children. In a Hamburg poet's letter to one of his 10 children, he tells him to "be happy to learn from others, and where there is talk of wisdom, human happiness, light, freedom, and virtue, listen intently." Ozment's absorbing look at some of our ancestors living in a wholly different society shows us how little things have changed.George CohenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.