Authors:
- Provides a much-needed chronological narrative of the maternal imagination
- Investigates concerns that are still current today, such as acceptable prenatal care, responsibility for abnormal births, gendered minds, and the role of the father
- Looks at a broad range of well-known writers, such as Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, Anna-Laetitia Barbauld, William Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book reveals the cultural significance of the pregnant woman by examining major eighteenth-century debates concerning separate spheres, man-midwifery, performance, marriage, the body, education, and creative imagination. Exploring medical, economic, moral, and literary ramifications, this book engages critically with the notion that a pregnant woman could alter the development of her foetus with the power of her thoughts and feelings. Eighteenth-century authors sought urgently to define, understand and control the concept of maternal imagination as they responded to and provoked fundamental questions about female intellect and the relationship between mind and body. Interrogating the multiple models of maternal imagination both separately and as a holistic set of socio-cultural components, the author uncovers the discourse of maternal imagination across eighteenth-century drama, popular print, medical texts, poetry and novels. This overdue rehabilitation of the pregnant woman in literature is essential reading for scholars of the eighteenth century, gender and literary history.
Reviews
“Buckley’s volume is a most welcome addition to the scholarship in the field, which tends to analyze pregnancy through the history of medicine … . Buckley has done a splendid job recuperating the history of the maternal imagination in eighteenth-century Britain through its many lenses—medical, literary, social, and cultural—and through its many permutations.” (Marilyn Francus, Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 33 (1), 2020)
“In The Maternal Imagination, Buckley presents significant original evidence of the medical, folkloric, political, and aesthetic roots and occurrences of the trope of maternal imagination in a diverse range of literary genres in the eighteenth century. This comprehensive work is a valuable contribution to the field of eighteenth-century cultural history.” (Rebecca Davies, Associate Professor of English Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)Authors and Affiliations
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Brighton, UK
Jenifer Buckley
About the author
Jenifer Buckley is the author of the articles ‘“Bankrupt in all but my good wishes”: Speculative Economics in Cleomelia; Or The Generous Mistress’ in The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (2014), and ‘”’Tis My Father’s Fault”: Tristram Shandy and Paternal Imagination’ in The Male Body in Medicine and Literature (forthcoming, 2017).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Gender, Pregnancy and Power in Eighteenth-Century Literature
Book Subtitle: The Maternal Imagination
Authors: Jenifer Buckley
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53835-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-53834-1Published: 09 August 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-85253-9Published: 03 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-53835-8Published: 28 July 2017
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 292