Research Catalog

Title

Humoral wombs on the Shakespearean stage / Amy Kenny.

Author

Kenny, Amy

Publication

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2019]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 202 pages : illustrations; 22 cm.

Summary

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.

Series Statement

Palgrave studies in literature, science and medicine

Uniform Title

Palgrave studies in literature, science, and medicine.

Subjects

• Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
• 1500-1599
• Women in literature
• Body fluids in literature
• Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 > Characters > Women
• Uterus
• Great Britain
• Medicine in literature > History > 16th century
• Medicine in literature > History > 17th century
• History
• Medicine
• Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 > Knowledge > Medicine

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Included bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: the early modern womb -- The green womb -- The thick womb -- The fertile womb -- The monstrous womb -- The tomb womb -- The male womb -- Coda: The exonerated womb.

Call Number

JFD 19-3107

ISBN

• 3030052001
• 9783030052003

OCLC

1061026930

Author

Kenny, Amy, author.

Title

Humoral wombs on the Shakespearean stage / Amy Kenny.

Publisher

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2019]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Palgrave studies in literature, science and medicine

Palgrave studies in literature, science, and medicine.

Bibliography

Included bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1500-1599

Research Call Number

JFD 19-3107