ABSTRACT
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modern texts depict fertility, conception, delivery and gendered constructions of maternity by analyzing a wealth of historical documents and images in conjunction with dramatic and non-dramatic literary texts.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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |2 pages
Part I The Performance of Pregnancy
part |2 pages
Part II The Performance of Maternal Authority
part |2 pages
Part III The Performance of Maternal Suffering
part |2 pages
Part IV: The Performance of Maternal Erasure