Reproduction and the Maternal Body in Literature and Culture

Bodies of Knowledge, 1726-1818
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-74170-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)

Buch, Englisch, 290 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 585 g

Reihe: Routledge Advances in the Medical Humanities

This book examines a selection of texts to discuss how midwifery, obstetrics and women’s bodies were constructed during the (long) eighteenth century, and how these material-discursive entanglements between science, medicine, literature and culture have shaped society's views of pregnancy, childbirth and reproduction.

Drawing on theories from disciplines such as feminist new materialism, this book traces the history of both the reproductive body and the pluralistic medical knowledges that attended to pregnancy and childbirth during the Enlightenment and early Romanticism in Britain. It identifies the significance of literary and cultural artefacts in this knowledge formation, including the materiality of the female reproductive body itself, and raises awareness of myths about pregnancy and childbirth that persist today. This book features chapters exploring Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy, Or: The Ruin on the Rock, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, Or: The Wrongs of Woman, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Reproduction and the Maternal Body in Literature and Culture is an innovative and interdisciplinary contribution to the medical humanities and feminist philosophy of science and will interest scholars from a range of backgrounds, including literature and cultural studies, midwifery, medicine and history.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Henke, Jennifer S

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1.PART I Mapping the Field, 1.1. Introduction: In the Delivery Room, 1.2. Context: Historicising the Reproductive Body, 1.3. Framework: Beyond Representationalism, 2. PART II Science, Sex & Secret Bodies of Knowledge, 2.1. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), 2.2. John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1749), 2.3. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759), 2.4. Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy, Or: The Ruin on the Rock (1795), 2.5. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, Or: The Wrongs of Woman (1798), 2.6. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Or: The Modern Prometheus (1818), 3. PART III Stitching the Pieces Together, 3.1 Stitching, 4.Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Jennifer S. Henke is a literary and cultural studies scholar with a PhD from the University of Bremen, Germany, and a Venia Legendi for Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Bonn, Germany.