ABSTRACT
A principal goal of Birthing Bodies is to reveal the ways in which the sharing and comparing of stories as told across gender, genre, and political agenda might nuance our understanding of range of possible options for men and women of this era. Ferguson's work on homosexuality in the French Renaissance presents an erudite, generous, and apt approach when reading a variety of "queer" texts, many of which are taken up in Birthing Bodies, as the birthing subjects slip in and out of sexes and genders, though some evince more recognizable elements of homosexuality than others. This chapter investigates the author's sources as stories, tales of birthing, from conception to breastfeeding, with particular attention to the ways in which the corporeal realities of birthing body find expression in writing according to an author's interests. Birthing stories, if one can be permitted some cross-cultural and trans-historical leeway, are most often dramatic, vividly rendered, crucial narratives that one tells to the world.
