TY - CHAP
T1 - Imagining youth
T2 - Epistolary representations of the eighteenth-century adolescent body, c.1700-1780
AU - Goldsmith, Sarah
PY - 2023/7/4
Y1 - 2023/7/4
N2 - Whether at boarding school, university, London-based academies and Inns of Court, or on the Grand Tour, lengthy periods of absence from one’s family were a defining feature of eighteenth-century elite education. Using correspondence sent between parents, tutors and sons and written during the months and years of separation created by the Grand Tour, this chapter examines the process of maturation and reoccurring theme of the youthful, adolescent body. In doing so, it explores an epistolary culture of the body in which parents and guardians were deeply interested in their children’s physical health, bodily deportment, proportion and beauty. Written with a keen awareness that the Grand Tour took place during a life stage of rapid physical development, these epistolary exchanges were accompanied by efforts to imagine the unknown. Through this process, parents often laid out their hopes, fears, and expectations for their son’s physical forms. The responses of their children and tutors provide insights into how such expectations were managed. This chapter uses these letters to interrogate eighteenth-century cultural understandings of youth as the embodiment of potential, physicality and beauty; the standards expected of developing youthful bodies; and the ways in which eighteenth-century elite society perceived the bodily transition from childhood to youth to adulthood.
AB - Whether at boarding school, university, London-based academies and Inns of Court, or on the Grand Tour, lengthy periods of absence from one’s family were a defining feature of eighteenth-century elite education. Using correspondence sent between parents, tutors and sons and written during the months and years of separation created by the Grand Tour, this chapter examines the process of maturation and reoccurring theme of the youthful, adolescent body. In doing so, it explores an epistolary culture of the body in which parents and guardians were deeply interested in their children’s physical health, bodily deportment, proportion and beauty. Written with a keen awareness that the Grand Tour took place during a life stage of rapid physical development, these epistolary exchanges were accompanied by efforts to imagine the unknown. Through this process, parents often laid out their hopes, fears, and expectations for their son’s physical forms. The responses of their children and tutors provide insights into how such expectations were managed. This chapter uses these letters to interrogate eighteenth-century cultural understandings of youth as the embodiment of potential, physicality and beauty; the standards expected of developing youthful bodies; and the ways in which eighteenth-century elite society perceived the bodily transition from childhood to youth to adulthood.
UR - https://www.routledge.com/Letters-and-the-Body-17001830-Writing-and-Embodiment/Goldsmith-Haggerty-Harvey/p/book/9780367461515?_gl=1*bxcioo*_ga*MTAxOTM5NzE5OC4xNjc3MTY1NDg1*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*MTY3NzE2NTQ4Ni4xLjEuMTY3NzE2NTk0Ni4wLjAuMA..
U2 - 10.4324/9781003027256-4
DO - 10.4324/9781003027256-4
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9780367461515
T3 - Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies
SP - 40
EP - 63
BT - Letters and the Body, 1700-1830
A2 - Goldsmith, Sarah
A2 - Haggerty, Sheryllynne
A2 - Harvey, Karen
PB - Routledge
CY - Abingdon
ER -