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Shakespearean maternities : crises of conception in early modern England / Chris Laoutaris

Author
Laoutaris, Chris
Published
Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2008]
Copyright Date
©2008
Physical Description
1 online resource (xv, 304 pages) : illustrations
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Language Note
English.
Contents
Introduction: Constructing maternal knowledge -- 1. Flesh and stone : dissecting maternity in the theatre of anatomy. -- Behold the woman : the Renaissance anatomist in the satyr's mask -- Hearts and hands : the satirical disclosures of maternity in Shakespeare's Hamlet -- 2. The cabinet of wonders : monstrous conceptions in the theatre of nature. -- Wonders of common things : the natural history of maternity and the Renaissance garden-grotto -- Above the beast : the monster and the natural historian in Shakespeare's Tempest -- 3. Strange labours : maternity and maleficium in the theatre of justice. -- Breaching the wall : the archaeologies of witchcraft and the maternal body in early modern England -- Poisoned chalices : the reproductive demonologies of Shakespeare's Macbeth -- 4. Speaking stones : memory and maternity in the theatre of death. -- Voce pia mater : memoralising mothers and the death-ritual in early modern England -- A celerity in dying : the maternal postures of death in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra -- Postscript: Our maternities : the historical legacy.
Summary
This study explores maternity in the 'disciplines' of early modern England. Placing the reproductive female body centre-stage in Shakespeare's theatre, Laoutaris ranges beyond the domestic sphere in order to recuperate the wider intellectual, epistemological, and archaeological significance of maternity to the Renaissance imagination. Focusing on 'anatomy' in Hamlet, 'natural history' in The Tempest, 'demonology' in Macbeth, and 'heraldry' in Antony and Cleopatra, this book reveals the ways in which the maternal body was figured in, and in turn contributed towards the re-conceptualisation of, bodies of knowledge. Laoutaris argues that Shakespeare resists a monolithic concept of motherhood, presenting instead a range of contested 'maternities' which challenge the distinctive 'ways of knowing' these early disciplines worked to impose on the order of created nature. Key Features Provides a new interpretation of a subject which is becoming increasingly popular among Shakespeare scholars, cultural and medical historians, and feminist critics Focuses on four of Shakespeare's best-loved plays Presents striking visual material which forms a central component of the book's critical methodology, including anatomical plates, cabinets of curiosity, early modern follies and grottoes, artefacts of witchcraft and superstition, Renaissance 'monsters', ceramics, portraiture, funerary monuments and statuary Offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of maternity drawing on literary studies, gender studies, the history of art, archaeology, and the history of the sciences
Subject(s)
Genre(s)
ISBN
9780748630424 (electronic bk.)
0748630422 (electronic bk.)
1281947695
9781281947697
0748671684
9780748671687
9786611947699
6611947698
0748624368 (Cloth)
9780748624362
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 43111348