The Female Body in Medicine and Literature

Review

"[An] engaging and important book which puts forward a range of persuasive arguments, advancing our understanding of the topic whilst making a compelling case for the value of interdisciplinary research and work across historical periods." -- Holly Furneaux, University of Leicester


Product Description

The Female Body in Medicine and Literature features essays that explore literary texts in relation to the history of gynaecology and women's surgery. Gender studies and feminist approaches to literature have become busy and enlightening fields of enquiry in recent times, yet there remains no single work that fully analyses the impact of women's surgery on literary production or, conversely, ways in which literary trends have shaped the course of gynaecology and other branches of women's medicine. This book will demonstrate how fiction and medicine have a long-established tradition of looking towards each other for inspiration and elucidation in questions of gender. Medical textbooks and pamphlets have consistently cited fictional plots and characterisations as a way of communicating complex or 'sensitive' ideas. Essays explore historical accounts of clinical procedures, the relationship between gynaecology and psychology, and cultural conceptions of motherhood, fertility, and the
female organisation


About the Author

Andrew Mangham is Lecturer in English at the University of Reading and the author of Violent Women and Sensation Fiction: Crime, Medicine and Victorian Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Greta Depledge is a lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London