Overview

This book explores how the humoral womb was evoked, enacted, and embodied on the Shakespearean stage by considering the intersection of performance studies and humoral theory.  Galenic naturalism applied the four humors—yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood—to delineate women as porous, polluting, and susceptible to their environment.  This book draws on early modern medical texts to provocatively demonstrate how Shakespeare’s canon offers a unique agency to female characters via humoral discourse of the womb.  Chapters discuss early modern medicine’s attempt to theorize and interpret the womb, specifically its role in disease, excretion, and conception, alongside passages of Shakespeare’s plays to offer a fresh reading of (geo)humoral subjectivity.  The book shows how Shakespeare subversively challenges contemporary notions of female fluidity by accentuating the significance of the womb as a source of self-defiance and autonomy for female characters acrosshis canon.  

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9783030052003

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Reviews

“Humoral Wombs offers multiple points of entry for those of us interested in pregnancy, the medical humanities, and early modern staging of female bodies. … Humoral Wombs is a labor of love for those of us invested in critical theory and cultural studies because Kenny has offered us a more detailed point of entry into the historical documents available to us. … Those of us interested in pregnancy would do well to read and cite Humoral Wombs … .” (Alicia Andrzejewski, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 75 (1), 2022)

Humoral Wombs offers multiple points of entry for those of us interested in pregnancy, the medical humanities, and early modern staging of female bodies. ... Humoral Wombs is a labor of love for those of us invested in critical theory and cultural studies because Kenny has offered us a more detailed point of entry into the historical documents available to us. ... Those of us interested in pregnancy would do well to read and cite Humoral Wombs ... . (Alicia Andrzejewski, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 75 (1), 2022)

Author Information

Amy Kenny is Visiting Assistant Professor at University of California, Riverside, USA. She holds a PhD in Early Modern Literature and Culture from the University of Sussex and has worked as Research Coordinator at Shakespeare’s Globe, where she was chief dramaturg for 15 productions and conducted over 80 interviews with actors and directors as part of an archival resource for future scholarship.  She has published on dramaturgy, performance of laughter, the senses, and disease in Shakespeare. 

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