Chairs: Michèle Cohen (UCL) & Mascha Hansen (Greifswald Universität)
– Géraldine Lepan – Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 – « L’éducation morale selon Rousseau : de la solitude de l’enfance, à l’éveil de l’humanité ».
– Matthew Grenby – Newcastle University – ‘Delight in Friendship: managing the sociable self in early British children’s literature’.
Abstract: We might assume that peer-to-peer friendship has always been an important and approved part of children’s lives. Perhaps it was, but the books that children read in the eighteenth century were much more dubious and questioning about this kind of sociability. This paper examines how friendship and sociability was presented and debated in British children’s literature, and considers whether a coherent set of proprieties for children’s friendship was imposed and adhered to.