Conceiving bodies: Reproduction in early medieval English medicine (Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture)

By: Dana Oswald

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Synopsis: Despite reliance on ingredients like horse dung, Old English remedies for women’s medicine speak to contemporary reproductive concerns. Previous translators reduced the remedies to a general category of women’s medicine, but sustained examination of language reveals important distinctions: remedies for menstruation indicate social concerns about fertility, where remedies for ‘cleansing’ do not provide a clear path to conception, but rather foreclose it. Rarest of all are the remedies for childbirth, but their rarity is compounded by the practices of translators who conflate the language for women’s reproduction into an amorphous singularity. Through an original method of hysteric philology—the combining of traditional philology with contemporary feminist and medical epistemologies—this book situates itself in the historical treatment of reproductive people as both objects and subjects of medical practice, and gestures forward in time to the contemporary struggle for bodily autonomy.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 232 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9781526176899
Related ISBNs:: 9781526176882, 9781526176875, 9781526176882, 9781526176875
Publisher:: Manchester University Press
Date of Addition:: 05/27/24
Copyrighted By:: N/A
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts, Medicine
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.