Imagining youth: Epistolary representations of the eighteenth-century adolescent body, c.1700-1780

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract / Description of output

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.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLetters and the Body, 1700-1830
Subtitle of host publicationWriting and Embodiment
EditorsSarah Goldsmith, Sheryllynne Haggerty, Karen Harvey
Place of PublicationAbingdon
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter2
Pages40-63
Number of pages24
Edition1st
ISBN (Electronic)9781003027256
ISBN (Print)9780367461515
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Jul 2023

Publication series

NameRoutledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies
PublisherRoutledge

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