ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Julie Singer is professor of French at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of two books, including Representing Mental Illness in Late Medieval France: Machines, Madness, Metaphor.

REVIEWS

"Historical records about the lives of children are sparse, relegated as they often were to the domestic sphere. Nevertheless, as [Singer] shows, literary and religious texts offer glimpses of how young people were imagined. Her perceptive analysis reveals what these depictions say about medieval ideas of disability, personhood and truth. . . A pleasure to read, full of insights where one least expects them."

— Times Literary Supplement

“This stunningly original book sets the example for ambitiously creative medieval scholarship that is theoretically rich, conceptually sharp, beautifully structured, lucidly communicated, and anchored in fundamental questions of humanity.”

— Medium Aevum

“Voicing a stirring call for readers to reconsider the silence and lacunae that are traditionally attributed to infancy, in her latest monograph, Julie Singer situates infancy as both an essential critical framework and an instructive, illuminative methodology through which a gaping archival silence can be rectified-that silence being literary representations of the medieval child, and specifically, the spoken life of the medieval child.”

— Quidditas

“Writing with verve and crystal-clear prose, Singer explores how literary representations of infancy may articulate concerns central to medieval understandings of voice, speech, and song; of the family and social relations; of law and justice; of disability, family, and care. Often surprising, always compelling, Out of the Mouths of Babes is both theoretically rich and a joy to read."

— Peggy McCracken, University of Michigan

“Meticulously researched and impressive in scope, Out of the Mouths of Babes investigates not only the place of childhood in medieval culture but also thornier, contemporary questions surrounding the beginnings of life, subjectivity, and personhood made more vibrant by Singer’s careful exploration of their medieval stagings. Her work reshapes our understanding of infancy and childhood—even embryology—in the medieval period and helps us better understand what it means to be a person, in any age.”

— Megan Moore, University of Missouri

“In this remarkable book, Singer shows how much infants, despite being defined as speechless, have to say about some of the most towering and complex intellectual problems facing medieval, and modern, society. Theoretically daring, cleverly structured, and engagingly written, Out of the Mouths of Babes teases out the surprising importance of an effectively ignored subject, and it does so with a unique combination of rigor, expertise, and creativity.”

— Charlie Samuelson, University of Colorado Boulder

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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