Can I read Birth Figures : Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body on EtoBox?

Birth Figures : Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body by Rebecca Whiteley is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Birth Figures : Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body about?

The first full study of “birth figures” and their place in early modern knowledge-making. Birth figures are printed images of the pregnant womb, always shown in series, that depict the variety of ways in which a fetus can present for birth. Historian Rebecca Whiteley coined the term and here offers the first systematic analysis of the images’ creation, use, and impact. Whiteley reveals their origins in ancient medicine and explores their inclusion in many medieval gynecological manuscripts, focusing on their explosion in printed midwifery and surgical books in Western Europe from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. During this period, birth figures formed a key part of the visual culture of medicine and midwifery and were widely produced. They reflected and shaped how the pregnant body was known and treated. And by providing crucial bodily knowledge to midwives and surgeons, birth figures were also deeply entangled with wider cultural preoccupations with generation and creativity, female power and agency, knowledge and its dissemination, and even the condition of the human in the universe. Birth Figures studies how different kinds of people understood childbirth and

Who reads Birth Figures : Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body?

Author

Rebecca Whiteley

Publisher

The University of Chicago Press

Published

2023

Language

EN

ISBN

9780226823126

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

History, Humanities