Philippe Ariès

Philippe Ariès

Philippe Ariès (21 July 1914, Blois – 8 February 1984, Paris) was an important French medievalist and historian of the family and childhood, in the style of Georges Duby. Ariès has written many books on the common daily life. His most prominent works regarded the change in the western attitudes towards death.

Ariès regarded himself as a right-wing anarchist Fact|date=February 2007. He was close to the monarchist "Action française", and wrote in "La Nation française" review. However, he also cooperated with many left-wing French historians, like Michel Foucault.

He is best known for his book "L’Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous l’Ancient Régime" (1960), which was translated into English as "Centuries of Childhood" (1962). This book stands pre-eminent in the history of childhood; it was essentially the first book on the subject (although some antiquarian texts were in existence prior to this) and it seems that even today nobody can say anything on the topic without first referring to Ariès. Ariès is most famous for his statement that “in medieval society, the idea of childhood did not exist” (Ariès 1962: 125). The central thesis of "Centuries of Childhood" 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, came into being in the seventeenth century. Children were seen to be too weak to be counted and that they could disappear at any time. But these children were considered as an adult as soon as they could live without the help of their mothers, nanny, or someone else. "Centuries of Childhood" has had mixed fortunes; while it is important to acknowledge the profound significance of Ariès’ contribution, both in recognising childhood as a social construction rather than a biological given and in founding the history of childhood as a serious field of study, it has been widely criticised.

Criticism

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" (1997,63).citequote

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 (for example, Kroll 1977, Shahar 1990).

Further criticism of Ariès is found in an article, available online, 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" [http://www.ehs.org.uk/society/pdfs/Hendrick%2015a.pdf] .

In 2007, a fresh controversy emerged when young unknown Ryan Bathew alleged that Ariés had in fact, plagarised his seminal work "The Hour of Our Death" from Bathew, who described himself, somewhat mystifyingly, as "The War Machine".

econdary Sources

*Hutton, Patrick H., "Philippe Ariès and the politics of French cultural history", Univ. of Massachusetts Press 2004
*Evans, Richard J., "In Defence of History", Granta Books 1997


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