Pregnancy And Birth In Early Modern France

Author : Jacques Gélis
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book History of Childbirth written by Jacques Gélis and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Highly detailed and clearly written, this book is the first full-length study of the complex system of practices, beliefs and taboos which surrounded conception and childbirth in early modern Europe. In a rich and scholarly study, Jacques Gelis reconstructs the activities and attitudes of the midwives and mothers, and the sufferings they had to endure. He continues with an examination of the role of the Church, the herbalist and the mineral world (touchstones and talisman) in the explanation of the mysteries of procreation."--Amazon.ca.

Author : Victoria University (Toronto, Ont.). Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780772721396
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France written by Victoria University (Toronto, Ont.). Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Lianne McTavish
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351952390
Total Pages : 407 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France written by Lianne McTavish and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the early modern period in France, surgeon men-midwives were predominantly associated with sexual impropriety and physical danger; yet over time they managed to change their image, and by the eighteenth century were summoned to attend even the uncomplicated deliveries of wealthy, urban clients. In this study, Lianne McTavish explores how surgeons strove to transform the perception of their midwifery practices, claiming to be experts who embodied obstetrical authority instead of intruders in a traditionally feminine domain. McTavish argues that early modern French obstetrical treatises were sites of display participating in both the production and contestation of authoritative knowledge of childbirth. Though primarily written by surgeon men-midwives, the texts were also produced by female midwives and male physicians. McTavish's careful examination of these and other sources reveals representations of male and female midwives as unstable and divergent, undermining characterizations of the practice of childbirth in early modern Europe as a gender war which men ultimately won. She discovers that male practitioners did not always disdain maternal values. In fact, the men regularly identified themselves with qualities traditionally respected in female midwives, including a bodily experience of childbirth. Her findings suggest that men's entry into the lying-in chamber was a complex negotiation involving their adaptation to the demands of women. One of the great strengths of this study is its investigation of the visual culture of childbirth. McTavish emphasizes how authority in the birthing room was made visible to others in facial expressions, gestures, and bodily display. For the first time here, the vivid images in the treatises are analysed, including author portraits and engravings of unborn figures. McTavish reveals how these images contributed to arguments about obstetrical authority instead of merely illustrating the written content of the books. At the same time, her arguments move far beyond the lying-in chamber, shedding light on the exchange of visual information in early modern France, a period when identity was largely determined by the precarious act of putting oneself on display.

Author : Valerie Worth-Stylianou
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France written by Valerie Worth-Stylianou and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Valerie Worth-Stylianou
Publisher : Acmrs Publications
ISBN 13 : 9780772721389
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France written by Valerie Worth-Stylianou and published by Acmrs Publications. This book was released on 2013 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These texts were written in the vernacular for a readership of physicians and surgeons but also of midwives and lay women. So they present important evidence that, contrary to stereotypes, women were the recipients of medical texts written specifically for them. More generally, these texts demonstrate a strong interest in women's health, indicating that early modern physicians and surgeons had a new interest in the specificity of female anatomy and women's diseases. The texts selected and translated in this volume allow the reader to access an important group of primary sources on issues related to women's health, including childbirth and caesarean section, sterility, miscarriage, breastfeeding, etc. The selection of texts is well organized and coherent, the translation is accurate and fluent, and the texts are adequately annotated, so the book will be easily used by scholars and students, including undergraduates. It provides evidence of a new concern and attention for women's health needs, which, most interestingly, often went hand-in-hand with the rejection of misogynist stereotypes and the challenging of conventional views of female subordination and inferiority. --Gianna Pomata Professor of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University

Author : Holly Tucker
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780814330425
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pregnant Fictions written by Holly Tucker and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pregnant Fictions explores the complex role of pregnancy in early-modern tale-telling and considers how stories of childbirth were used to rethink gendered "truths" at a key moment in the history of ideas.

Author : Kirk D. Read
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317174070
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France written by Kirk D. Read and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pregnant, birthing, and nurturing body is a recurring topos in early modern French literature. Such bodies, often metaphors for issues and anxieties obtaining to the gendered control of social and political institutions, acquired much of their descriptive power from contemporaneous medical and scientific discourse. In this study, Kirk Read brings together literary and medical texts that represent a range of views, from lyric poets, satirists and polemicists, to midwives and surgeons, all of whom explore the popular sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century narratives of birth in France. Although the rhetoric of birthing was widely used, strategies and negotiations depended upon sex and gender; this study considers the male, female, and hermaphroditic experience, offering both an analysis of women's experiences to be sure, but also opening onto the perspectives of non-female birthers and their place in the social and political climate of early modern France. The writers explored include Rabelais, Madeleine and Catherine Des Roches, Louise Boursier, Pierre de Ronsard, Pierre Boaistuau and Jacques Duval. Read also explores the implications of the metaphorical use of reproduction, such as the presentation of literary work as offspring and the poet/mentor relationship as that of a suckling child. Foregrounded in the study are the questions of what it means for women to embrace biological and literary reproduction and how male appropriation of the birthing body influences the mission of creating new literary traditions. Furthermore, by exploring the cases of indeterminate birthing entities and the social anxiety that informs them, Read complicates the binarisms at work in the vexed terrain of sexuality, sex, and gender in this period. Ultimately, Read considers how the narrative of birth produces historical conceptions of identity, authority, and gender.

Author : Susan Broomhall
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780719062865
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Women's Medical Work in Early Modern France written by Susan Broomhall and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text combines detailed research with a clear presentation of the existing literature of women's medical work, making it useful to students of gender and medical history.

Author : Dr Cathy McClive
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 1472453816
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France written by Dr Cathy McClive and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern bodies, particularly menstruating and pregnant bodies, were not stable signifiers. Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France presents the first full-length discussion of menstruation and its uncertain connections with embodied sex, gender and reproduction in early modern France. Attitudes to menstruation are explored in three inter-linked arenas: medicine, moral theology and law across the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Drawing on a wide range of diverse sources, including court records and private documents, the author uses case studies to explore the relationship between the exceptional corporeality of individuals and attempts to construct menstrual norms, reflecting on how early modern individuals, lay or otherwise, grappled with the enigma of menstruation. She analyzes how early modern men and women accounted for the function, recurrence and appearance of menstruation, from its role in maintaining health to the link between other physiological and bodily processes, including those found in both male and female bodies. She questions the assumption that menstruation was exclusively associated with women by the second half of the eighteenth century, arguing that whilst sex-related, menstruation was not sex-specific even at the turn of the nineteenth. Menstruation remains a contentious topic today. This book is not, therefore, simply a study of periods in early modern France, but is also of necessity an exploration about the nature and constitution of historical evidence, particularly bodily evidence and how historians use this evidence. It raises important questions about the concept of certainty and about the value of observation, testimony, expertise, the nature of language and the construction of bodily truths - about the body as witness and the body as evidence.

Author : Sherry Marie Velasco
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Male Delivery written by Sherry Marie Velasco and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the one-act comedy El parto de Juan Rana (John Frog Gives Birth) as a point of departure, Velasco argues that the figure of the pregnant man in early modern Spanish culture was not merely comic entertainment, but also served an important role as a physical representation of the anxieties about the changing roles of men and women at the time. Men were increasingly taking over medical duties--especially surrounding childbirth--usually left to women and, as their medical knowledge increased, they became aware of bodies and behaviors--both male and female--that transgressed gender norms. The anxieties about men who acted in ways seen as increasingly womanly (from acting effeminately to participating in homosexual activity) played out in the character of pregnant Juan Rana. Then, Velasco turns to Hollywood and asks if we might not use the lessons of Juan Rana to help explain why contemporary America is also fascinated by the idea of male pregnancy--think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior--and our increasing anxiety over the changing face of masculinity in our own culture.