Shakespearean Maternities Crises Of Conception In Early Modern England

"This study explores maternity in the 'disciplines' of early modern England. Placing the reproductive female body centre-stage in Shakespeare's theatre, Chris Laoutaris ranges beyond the domestic sphere in which the rituals of childbirth, midwifery and wet-nursing were performed 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."--Jacket.