Philippe Ariès

Philippe Ariès
Born (1914-07-21)21 July 1914
Blois, France
Died 8 February 1984(1984-02-08) (aged 69)
Paris, France
Known for Centuries of Childhood

Philippe Ariès (French: [aʁjɛs]; 21 July 1914 – 8 February 1984) was a French medievalist and historian of the family and childhood, in the style of Georges Duby. He wrote many books on the common daily life. His most prominent works regarded the change in the western attitudes towards death.

Ariès regarded himself as an "anarchist of the right".[1] He was initially close to the Action française but later distanced himself from it, as he viewed it as too authoritarian, hence his self-description as an "anarchist". Ariès also contributed to La Nation française, a royalist review. However, he also co-operated with many left-wing French historians, especially with Michel Foucault, who wrote his obituary.

During his life, his work was often better known in the English-speaking world than it was in France itself. He is known above all for his book L’Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (1960), which was translated into English as Centuries of Childhood (1962). This book is pre-eminent in the history of childhood, as it was essentially the first book on the subject (although some antiquarian texts were earlier). Even today, Ariès remains the standard reference to the topic. Ariès is most famous for his statement that "in medieval society, the idea of childhood did not exist".[2] Its central thesis is that attitudes towards children were progressive and evolved over time with economic change and social advancement, until childhood, as a concept and an accepted part of family life, from the 17th century. It was thought that children were too weak to be counted and that they could disappear at any time. However, children were considered as adults as soon as they could live alone.

The book has had mixed fortunes. His contribution was profoundly significant both in that it recognised childhood as a social construction rather than as a biological given and in that it founded the history of childhood as a serious field of study. At the same time, his account of childhood has by now been widely criticised.

Ariès is likewise remembered for his invention of another field of study: the history of attitudes to death and dying. Ariès saw death, like childhood, as a social construction. His seminal work in this ambit is L'Homme devant la mort (1977), his last major book, published in the same year when his status as a historian was finally recognised by his induction into the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), as a directeur d'études.

Criticism of Centuries of Childhood

There has been widespread criticism of the methods that Ariès used to draw his conclusions about the role of childhood in early modern Europe. One of his most noted critics was the historian Geoffrey Elton. Elton's main criticism of Ariès is paraphrased in Richard J. Evans's book on historiography, In Defence of History: "...in everyday life children were indeed dressed differently to adults; they were just put in adult clothes to have their portraits painted."[3]

That is to say that Ariès took early modern portraits as an accurate representation of the look of early modern families whereas a lot of the clients would use them to improve their status.

The assertion that the medieval world was ignorant of childhood has undergone considerable attack from other writers.[4]

Further criticism of Ariès is found in an article from 1992 by Harry Hendrick for the Journal of the Economic History Society. Within the article, entitled “Children and Childhood,” Hendrick lists four criticisms of Ariès's work:

"Firstly that his data are either unrepresentative or unreliable. Secondly that he takes evidence out of context, confuses prescription with practice, and uses atypical examples. Thirdly, that he implicitly denies the immutability of the special needs of children, for food, clothing, shelter, affection and conversation. Fourthly, that he puts undue emphasis on the work of moralists and educationalists while saying little of economic and political factors."[5]

Works

References

  1. ↑ Hutton 2004, p. 73.
  2. ↑ Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (1962): 125.
  3. ↑ Evans, 1997, p. 63.
  4. ↑ For example, Kroll 1977, Shahar 1990.
  5. ↑ Archived 22 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine.

Further reading

  • Boyd, Kelly, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writers (Rutledge, 1999) 1:50-51
  • Hutton, Patrick H. (2004). Philippe Ariès and the Politics of French Cultural History. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-435-9. Retrieved 14 October 2013. 
  • Evans, Richard J., In Defence of History, Granta Books 1997
  • Gros, Guillaume, "Philippe Ariès. Un traditionaliste non-conformiste, de l'Action française à l'Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales", Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2008.
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