عنوان

Humoral wombs on the Shakespearean stage /

303005201X

9783030052010

3030052001

9783030052003

Humoral wombs on the Shakespearean stage /

[Book]

Amy Kenny.

Cham :

Palgrave Macmillan,

[2019]

1 online resource (xi, 202 pages)

Palgrave studies in literature, science and medicine

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Intro; Acknowledgments; Contents; List of Figures; Chapter 1: Introduction: The Early Modern Womb; "receptacle and receiver of seed"; "evil quality of the womb"; "womb unmeasurable"; "swallowing womb of this deep pit"; Literature Review; Chapter Overview; References; Chapter 2: The Green Womb; "a green girl"; "sick and green"; "treasure of her honor"; "almost spent with hunger"; "with fairest flowers"; Conclusions; References; Chapter 3: The Thick Womb; "the babe that milks me"; "compunctious visitings of nature"; "dunnest smoke of hell"; "the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff."

"The sweetest flower of all the field""womb of death"; Conclusions; References; Chapter 7: The Male Womb; "the womb of pia-mater"; "unpregnant of my cause"; "this mother swells up"; "tempest in my mind"; "there's the sulfurous pit-burning"; "give me an ounce of civet"; Conclusions; References; Chapter 8: Coda: The Exonerated Womb; References; Index

ConclusionsReferences; Chapter 4: The Fertile Womb; "hard thing to know"; "pricklings and many wringings in her belly"; "the child brags in her belly already"; "the Queen's in labor"; Conclusions; References; Chapter 5: The Monstrous Womb; "great delight and pleasure in the venerious act"; "copy of the father"; "you have too much blood in him"; "the child-bed privilege denied"; "blots thy father"; "ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb"; Conclusions; References; Chapter 6: The Tomb Womb; "bleed plentifully"; "bathe hands in Caesar's blood"; "Look on her!"; "smooth as monumental alabaster."

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This book explores how the humoral womb was evoked, enacted, and embodied on the Shakespearean stage by considering the intersection of performance studies and humoral theory. Galenic naturalism applied the four humors?yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood?to delineate women as porous, polluting, and susceptible to their environment. This book draws on early modern medical texts to provocatively demonstrate how Shakespeare?s canon offers a unique agency to female characters via humoral discourse of the womb. Chapters discuss early modern medicine?s attempt to theorize and interpret the womb, specifically its role in disease, excretion, and conception, alongside passages of Shakespeare?s plays to offer a fresh reading of (geo)humoral subjectivity. The book shows how Shakespeare subversively challenges contemporary notions of female fluidity by accentuating the significance of the womb as a source of self-defiance and autonomy for female characters across his canon.

Humoral wombs on the Shakespearean stage.

9783030052003

Shakespeare, William,1564-1616-- Characters-- Women.

Shakespeare, William,1564-1616-- Knowledge-- Medicine.

Shakespeare, William,1564-1616.

Shakespeare, William,1564-1616.

Body fluids in literature.

Medicine in literature-- History-- 16th century.

Medicine in literature-- History-- 17th century.

Medicine in literature.

Uterus.

Body fluids in literature.

DRAMA-- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.

Medicine in literature.

Medicine.

Uterus.

Women in literature.

DRA-- 003000

Kenny, Amy

20200823081326.0

pn

[Book]

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