Performing Maternity in Early Modern England

By Kathryn R. McPherson

Performing Maternity in Early Modern England features essays that share a common concern with exploring maternity's cultural representation, performative aspects and practical consequences in the period from 1540-1690. The essays interrogate how early modern texts depict fertility, conception, delivery and gendered constructions of maternity by analyzing a wealth of historical documents and images in conjunction with dramatic and non-dramatic literary texts. They emphasize that the embodied, repeated and public nature of maternity defines it as inherently performative and ultimately central to the production of gender identity during the early modern period.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0754661172
• ISBN13: 9780754661177
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"