Kirk D. Read
Ashgate
Hardback
170

The pregnant birthing and nurturing body is a recurring topos in French Renaissance literature a metaphor for literary reproduction deeply informed by the medical discourse of its day. Kirk Read here pairs literary and medical texts from the period to explore the popular sixteenth-century narrative of birth. Representing views from players including midwives lyric poets polemicists nuns and surgeons he investigates how the narrative of birth produces historical conceptions of identity authority and gender.