Imagining the Irish child

<p>This book examines the ways in which <i>ideas</i> about children childhood and Ireland changed together in Irish Protestant writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses on different varieties of the child found in the work of a range of Irish Protestant writers theologians philosophers educationalists politicians and parents from the early seventeenth century up to the outbreak of the 1798 Rebellion. <br><br>The book is structured around a detailed examination of six 'versions' of the child: the evil child the vulnerable/innocent child the political child the believing child the enlightened child and the freakish child. It traces these versions across a wide range of genres (fiction sermons political pamphlets letters educational treatises histories catechisms and children's bibles) showing how concepts of childhood related to debates about Irish nationality politics and history across these two centuries.</p>