Popular Medicine, Hysterical Disease, and Social Controversy in Shakespeare's England

by Peterson, Kaara L.

• ISBN13: 9780754698234
• ISBN10: 0754698238
• Copyright: 2010-01-07
• Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co

Summary

This volume's central assertion is that the 'forgetting' of European women's contributions during the period between the two world wars was not accidental but was ideologically motivated. Key concerns are canon formation. genre, literature and journalism, women's political activism, antifascism, the avant-garde, professional life, and women's involvement in voluntary associations. Bringing together scholars with diverse expertise, the collection invites connections and comparisons across the whole spectrum of women's political, social, and cultural activities.

Excerpts

Mining a series of previously uncharted conversations springing up in 16th- and 17th-century popular medicine and culture, this study explores early modern England's significant and sustained interest in the hysterical diseases of women. Kaara L. Peterson assembles a fascinating collection of medical materials to support her discussion of contemporary debates about varieties of uterine pathologies and the implications of these debates for our understanding of drama's representation of hysterica passio cases in particular, among other hysterical maladies.