Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England
Ravenous Natures
Authors: Skuse, Alanna
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- About this book
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This book is open access under a CC-BY licence.
Cancer is perhaps the modern world's most feared disease. Yet, we know relatively little about this malady's history before the nineteenth century. This book provides the first in-depth examination of perceptions of cancerous disease in early modern England. Looking to drama, poetry and polemic as well as medical texts and personal accounts, it contends that early modern people possessed an understanding of cancer which remains recognizable to us today. Many of the ways in which medical practitioners and lay people imagined cancer – as a 'woman's disease' or a 'beast' inside the body – remain strikingly familiar, and they helped to make this disease a byword for treachery and cruelty in discussions of religion, culture and politics. Equally, cancer treatments were among the era's most radical medical and surgical procedures. From buttered frog ointments to agonizing and dangerous surgeries, they raised abiding questions about the nature of disease and the proper role of the medical practitioner.
- About the authors
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Alanna Skuse is a scholar of early modern literature and history, who has lectured at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, UK. She has previously published on early modern treatments for cancer and on the uses of 'canker' in Shakespeare's Sonnets.
- Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Introduction
Pages 1-19
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What Was Cancer? Definition, Diagnosis and Cause
Pages 20-39
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Cancer and the Gendered Body
Pages 40-60
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‘It Is, Say Some, of a Ravenous Nature’: Zoomorphic Images of Cancer
Pages 61-73
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Cancerous Growth and Malignancy
Pages 74-93
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England
- Book Subtitle
- Ravenous Natures
- Authors
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- Alanna Skuse
- Series Title
- Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
- Copyright
- 2015
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan UK
- Copyright Holder
- Alanna Skuse
- eBook ISBN
- 978-1-137-48753-7
- DOI
- 10.1057/9781137487537
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-1-137-48752-0
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-1-137-56919-6
- Series ISSN
- 2634-6435
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- VIII, 219
- Topics
