ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the 'mingled yarn' of maternity through the fabric of Renaissance romance. It addresses works by male authors, sharing a concern with the management of maternity through strategies of purification and containment. The book attends primarily to women's voices, analyzing transformations of maternity across a range of genres and occasions. It invites reflection on the uses to which Renaissance culture put maternal stereotypes as well as the powerful fears and desires that mothers evoke, assuage and sometimes express in the fantasy world of romance. The book seeks to participate in the scholarly investigation of maternity in early modern England by focusing on romance narratives in various forms: not motherhood as it was actually lived, but as it was figured in the world of romance by authors ranging from Edmund Spenser to Margaret Cavendish.
