Maternal Measures

Naomi YavneyNaomi Miller

Prize: Collaborative Projects Award Recipient 2001 for the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women This is an excellent example of the ways in which contemporary women's studies, particularly that of the early modern period, "complicates categories" (to use the title of a recent Berkshire Women's History Convention). Not content simply with what might be termed "conventional" interdisciplinarity--though that is amply present with authors who are specialists in several European literatures, as well as art and music history--the editors have chosen to define their subject in ways that will encourage readers to think across many different types of lines. The essays themselves often draw from a range of written and visual texts, and range from analyses of women's physical experiences in giving or assisting in birth and caring or refusing to care for others, to explorations of the cultural meaning the caregivers and others assigned to such activities. The collection has a large number of artistic and musical images--many of them rarely reproduced--and is a fine initial volume in a welcome new series. Merry Wiesner, Chair, Dept.of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Editor, Sixteenth Century Journal; Author of Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. ’These intelligent, sensitive essays expand our knowledge of mothering both as a social role and as a bodily event. Scrupulously researched, and often elegantly written, they ask us to rethink an identity central to the lives of all early modern women, whether themselves mothers or not. This book should be read by all those working on women in earlier times, and by all those interested in the often awkward, equivocal place of the maternal body in culture.’ Diane Purkiss, Fellow and Tutor in English at Keble College, and University lecturer at Oxford University 'This book is an excellent addition to the work being done on motherhood and on the family in the early modern period.' The Journal for Ear

• 1. Mothering Others: Caregiving as Spectrum and Spectacle in the Early Modern Period, Naomi J. Miller. Part I: Conception and Lactation. 2. Mirrors of Language, Mirrors of Self: The Conceptualization of Artistic Identity in Gaspara Stampa and Sofonisba Anguissola, Judith Rose. 3. Midwiving Virility in Early Modern England, Caroline Bicks. 4. To Bare or Not Too Bare: Sofonisba Anguissola's Nursing Madonna and the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, Naomi Yavneh. 5. "But Blood Whitened": Nursing Mothers and Others in Early Modern Britain, Rachel Trubowitz. Part II: Nurture and Instruction. 6. Language and "Mothers' Milk": Maternal Roles and the Nurturing Body in Early Modern Spanish Texts, Emilie L. Bergmann. 7. Motherhood and Protestant Polemics: Stillbirth in Hans von Rute's Abgotterei (1531), Glenn Ehrstine. 8. The Virgin's Voice: Representations of Mary in Seventeenth-Century Italian Song, Claire Fontijn. 9. "His open side our book": Meditation and Education in Elizabeth Grymeston's Miscelanea Meditations Memoratives, Edith Snook. Part III: Domestic Production. 10. Negativizing Nurture and Demonizing Domesticity: The Witch Construt in Early Modern Germany, Nancy Hayes. 11. The Difficult Birth of the Good Mother: Donneau de Visé's L'Embarras de Godard, ou l'Accouchée, Deborah Steinberger. 12. "Players in your huswifery, and huswives in your beds": Conflicting Identities of Early Modern English Women, Mary Thomas Crane. 13. Maternal Textualities, Susan Frye. Part IV: Social Authority. 14. "My Mother Musicke": Music and Early Modern Fantasties of Embodiment, Linda Phyllis Austern. 15. Marian Devotion and Maternal Authority in Seventeenth-Century England, Frances E. Dolan. 16. Mother Love: Clichés and Amazons in Early Modern England, Kathryn Schwarz. 17. Native Mothers, Natuve Others: La Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacajawea, Kari Boyd McBride. Part V: Morality. 18. London's Mourning Garment: Maternity, Mourning and Royal Succession, Patricia Phillippy. 19. Early Modern Medea: Representations of Child Murder in the Street Literature of Seventeenth-Century England, Susan C. Staub. 20. "I fear there will be a worse come in his place": Surrogate Parents and Shakespeare's Richard III, Heather Dubrow.