Commands and whispers: Renaissance parental advice books, their tradition, and their value in literary studies

In this study, I examine the advice tradition and discuss its profound impact on various areas of literary studies. Advice books are often belittled in academia because of their didactic nature. These texts are also ignored because they were often written by women and addressed to children.;Examining the impact of advice books is one way to circumvent the bias which has developed against didactic literature. Although by the time the first advice books of the Renaissance were printed, a history of advice literature had already been established in England, the Renaissance still offers us a unique opportunity to study both a large number of books which appeared at about the same time and some of the first books written by middle-class women. The subject matter of the mothers and fathers who wrote advice books during the Renaissance is essentially the same, but the prefatory material in mothers' advice books establishes a tradition of women apologizing and devaluing their own writing which, unfortunately, continues today.;In addition to increasing our understanding of women writers and clarifying some gender issues, studying advice books also adds to our historical understanding of the development of children's literature and even provides new avenues for understanding canonical writers.;Children's literature essentially began with the tradition of adults offering advice to their children in didactic works. More imaginative books grew out of a reaction by other adults who felt childhood should be fun. The consequence of these two literary trends--the didactic and the imaginative--is a literature for children which is as interesting to analyze as anything written for adults.;Studying advice books also offers new ways of understanding Shakespeare. Even a character who has been analyzed as often as Polonius can be newly examined in the light of advice literature. Thus, scholarly examination of advice books can contribute to academic research: in the areas of women's studies, children's studies, historical studies, and literary studies.