Stephanie Olsen

In the first five months of the Great War, one million men volunteered to fight. Yet by the end of 1915, the British government realized that conscription would be required. Why did so many enlist, and conversely, why so few? Focusing on analyses of widely felt emotions related to moral and domestic duty, Juvenile Nation broaches these questions in new ways. Through juvenile literature and an increasingly influential science of adolescence, Juvenile Nation explores the themes of loyalty, character, temperance, manliness, fatherhood, and religion. In the context of a widespread consensus on the ways to make men out of boys, an informal curriculum of emotional control, key to shaping the future citizenry of Britain and the Empire, is revealed. Juvenile Nation argues that the militaristic fervour of 1914 was an emotional outpouring based on association to family, to community and to Christian cultural continuity. Significantly, the same emotional response explains why so many men did not volunteer, with duty to family and community perhaps thought to have been best carried out at home. This is an important book that tells us much about the emergence of adolescence in modern Britain and the Empire.

Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Modern British Citizen, 1880-1914

Juvenile Nation

Jan Plamper

Benno Gammerl

Ute Frevert

Pascal Eitler

Uffa Jensen

Bettina Hitzer

Margrit Pernau

Anja Laukötter

Daniel Brückenhaus

Magdalena Beljan

Juliane Brauer

Joachim C. Häberlen

Learning How to Feel explores the ways in which children and adolescents learn not just how to express emotions that are thought to be pre-existing, but actually how to feel. The volume assumes that the embryonic ability to feel unfolds through a complex dialogue with the social and cultural environment and specifically through reading material. The fundamental formation takes place in childhood and youth. A multi-authored historical monograph, Learning How to Feel uses children's literature and advice manuals to access the training practices and learning processes for a wide range of emotions in the modern age, circa 1870-1970. The study takes an international approach, covering a broad array of social, cultural, and political milieus in Britain, Germany, India, Russia, France, Canada, and the United States. Learning How to Feel places multidirectional learning processes at the centre of the discussion, through the concept of practical knowledge. The book innovatively draws a framework for broad historical change during the course of the period. Emotional interaction between adult and child gave way to a focus on emotional interactions among children, while gender categories became less distinct. Children were increasingly taught to take responsibility for their own emotional development, to find 'authenticity' for themselves. In the context of changing social, political, cultural, and gender agendas, the building of nations, subjects and citizens, and the forging of moral and religious values, Learning How to Feel demonstrates how children were provided with emotional learning tools through their reading matter to navigate their emotional lives.

Children's Literature and Emotional Socialization, 1870-1970

Learning How to Feel

Children's Literature and the History of Emotional Socialization, 1870-1970

Stephanie Olsen

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