Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World PDF Author: Costanza Gislon Dopfel
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503580555
Category : Childbirth
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume of contributions from international scholars offers a cross-cultural and multi-period analysis of pregnancy and childbirth traditions in Western and Middle Eastern cultures. The studies focus on the ideas, practices, and visual representations surrounding pregnancy and birth-giving from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance and offer the reader the possibility of observing the perception, representation, and theoretic paradigm of these events in a wide range of cultural contexts. The collection fits within multiple traditions of specialized scholarship, yet its scope suggests a geographically global approach and a new, multicultural methodology that encompasses a wide range of practices, historical periods, and topics. On one hand, it participates in the well-established medical, historical, and iconographic discourse on childbirth and family that has enticed much interest over the last two decades; on the other, its unique thematic structure includes cultures and periods previously ignored in similar collections of essays. The articles span from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and India, and connect the experience of childbirth to the exchanges of knowledge, religious beliefs, and social practices. With its variety of topics and specializations, the volume encourages a global comparative approach to the cultural narrative surrounding the activities and attitudes connected to conception and birth, paying particular attention to material culture, religion, history, and iconography, as well as to the exchange and dispersion of medical knowledge.

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World

Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World PDF Author: Costanza Gislon Dopfel
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503580555
Category : Childbirth
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume of contributions from international scholars offers a cross-cultural and multi-period analysis of pregnancy and childbirth traditions in Western and Middle Eastern cultures. The studies focus on the ideas, practices, and visual representations surrounding pregnancy and birth-giving from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance and offer the reader the possibility of observing the perception, representation, and theoretic paradigm of these events in a wide range of cultural contexts. The collection fits within multiple traditions of specialized scholarship, yet its scope suggests a geographically global approach and a new, multicultural methodology that encompasses a wide range of practices, historical periods, and topics. On one hand, it participates in the well-established medical, historical, and iconographic discourse on childbirth and family that has enticed much interest over the last two decades; on the other, its unique thematic structure includes cultures and periods previously ignored in similar collections of essays. The articles span from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and India, and connect the experience of childbirth to the exchanges of knowledge, religious beliefs, and social practices. With its variety of topics and specializations, the volume encourages a global comparative approach to the cultural narrative surrounding the activities and attitudes connected to conception and birth, paying particular attention to material culture, religion, history, and iconography, as well as to the exchange and dispersion of medical knowledge.

History of Childbirth

History of Childbirth PDF Author: Jacques Gelis
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745618401
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Highly detailed and clearly written, this book is the first full-length study of the complex system of practices, beliefs and taboos which surrounded conception and childbirth in early modern Europe. In a rich and scholarly study, Jacques Gelis reconstructs the activities and attitudes of the midwives and mothers, and the sufferings they had to endure. He continues with an examination of the role of the Church, the herbalist and the mineral world (touchstones and talisman) in the explanation of the mysteries of procreation.

Pregnancy, Delivery, Childbirth

Pregnancy, Delivery, Childbirth PDF Author: Nadia Filippini
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429560478
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This book reconstructs the history of conception, pregnancy and childbirth in Europe from antiquity to the 20th century, focusing on its most significant turning points: the emergence of a medical-scientific approach to delivery in Ancient Greece, the impact of Christianity, the establishment of the man-midwife in the 18th century, the medicalisation of childbirth, the emergence of a new representation of the foetus as "unborn citizen", and, finally, the revolution of reproductive technologies. The book explores a history that, far from being linear, progressive or homogeneous, is characterised by significant continuities as well as transformations. The ways in which a woman gives birth and lives her pregnancy and the postpartum period are the result of a complex series of factors. The book therefore places these events in their wider cultural, social and religious contexts, which influenced the forms taken by rituals and therapeutic practices, religious and civil prescriptions and the regulation of the female body. The investigation of this complex experience represents a crucial contribution to cultural, social and gender history, as well as an indispensable tool for understanding today’s reality. It will be of great use to undergraduates studying the history of childbirth, the history of medicine, the history of the body, as well as women's and gender history more broadly.

The Bundahisn

The Bundahisn PDF Author: Domenico Agostini
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190879041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The Bundahisn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology. Redacted sometime in the ninth century CE, it is one of the most important of the surviving testaments to Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature and pre-Islamic Iranian culture. Well known in the field as an essential primary source for scholars of ancient Iran's history, religions, literatures, and languages, the Bundahisn is also a great work of literature itself, which ranks alongside the creation myths of other ancient traditions: Genesis, the Babylonian Emunah Elish, Hesiod's Theogony, and others.

Women, Fertility, and Maternal Art in Renaissance Florence

Women, Fertility, and Maternal Art in Renaissance Florence PDF Author: Costanza Gislon Dopfel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040226442
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Women, Fertility, and Maternal Art in Renaissance Florence examines maternity-centered art to reveal women’s crucial function in saving Florence from a depopulation catastrophe. Nativity and Madonna and Child images that graced many households and chapels in Florentine society formed a program of visual indoctrination, championing a 'birth epic' that glorified the social duty of reproduction but dismissed its high risk. As images emphasizing women’s reproductive value multiplied throughout the century, the accounts of their deaths in childbirth and the records of their elaborate public funerals present these mothers as new examples of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. This book re-centers the history of the Renaissance around women and their bodies – both as subjects of artistic representation and as critical but ignored contributors to Florentine society. It proposes a more inclusive vision of an era that is still too often addressed exclusively via the history of its male artists, bankers and merchants. Women, Fertility, and Maternal Art in Renaissance Florence appeals to both students and scholars in field of art history, social history, Renaissance art and gender studies, and also the general reader who has an interest in these areas.

The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe

The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Taylor McCall
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789147263
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
A new history of the medieval illustrations that birthed modern anatomy. This book is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustrated, The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe explores the many ways in which medieval surgeons, doctors, monks, and artists understood and depicted human anatomy. Taylor McCall refutes the common misconception that Renaissance artists and anatomists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius were the fathers of anatomy who performed the first human dissections. On the contrary, she argues that these Renaissance figures drew upon centuries of visual and written tradition in their works.

A Companion to Medieval Miracle Collections

A Companion to Medieval Miracle Collections PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004468498
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Miracle accounts provide a window into the views and conceptions of the laity, the uneducated, women, and even children, whose voices are mostly missing from other types of sources. They are not, however, simple to use. This volume offers a methodological insight into the medieval world of the miraculous. Consisting of 15 cutting-edge articles by leading scholars in the field, it provides versatile approaches to the origins, methods, and recording techniques of various types of miracle narratives. It offers fascinating case studies from across Europe, which show how miracle accounts can be used as a source for various topics such as lived religion, healing, protection, and family and gender. Contributors are Nicole Archambeau, Leigh Ann Craig, Ildikó Csepregi, Jussi Hanska, Emilia Jamroziak, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Jenni Kuuliala, Iona McCleery, Jyrki Nissi, Roberto Paciocco, Donald S. Prudlo, Marika Räsänen, Jonas Van Mulder, and Louise Elizabeth Wilson.

Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age

Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age PDF Author: Laura Kalas
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040193951
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This volume offers a comprehensive introduction to and investigation of the multivocality of women’s experience in the Middle Ages. In medieval Europe women saw their role in the Christian Church and society progressively confined to conflicting models of femininity epitomised by the dichotomy of Eve/Mary. Classical views of gender, predicated on misogynistic dichotomies which confined women to matter and the corruption of the flesh, were consolidated in powerful male-dominated clerical institutions and widely disseminated. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, however, women’s corporeality and somatic spirituality contributed to and influenced burgeoning modes of piety centred around the cult of the Virgin Mary and the veneration of the suffering body of Christ on the Cross. This shift in devotional practices afforded women as bodily beings the space for an increased level of self-expression, self-realisation, and authority. Ranging from philosophical and theological enquiry to education and art, as well as medical sciences and popular beliefs, the essays in this collection account for the complexities and richness of the conceptualisations and lived experiences of medieval Christian women. The book will be especially relevant to students and scholars of religion and history with an interest in medieval studies and gender. Whilst expounding the key strands of thinking in the field, it engages with and contributes to some of the latest scholarly research.

Thecla and Medieval Sainthood

Thecla and Medieval Sainthood PDF Author: Ghazzal Dabiri
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131651921X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Explores Saint Thecla and her story as preeminent models for medieval hagiographers across Eurasia and North Africa.

Health and Wellness in Antiquity through the Middle Ages

Health and Wellness in Antiquity through the Middle Ages PDF Author: William H. York
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313378665
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Early medical practices are not just a historical curiosity, but real stories about people and health that may teach us much about the 21st century. This intriguing volume offers a comparative examination of early medicine and health care in regions as varied as ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China, the Islamic world, and medieval Europe. Health and Wellness in Antiquity through the Middle Ages compares and contrasts health-care practices in seven different cultures from around the world. In considering the range of medical practitioners in each society, and the kinds of health care they provided, it examines the development of a written medical tradition, the methods of medical education, the practice of surgery, and the theories and practices of pharmacy. Other topics include the application of medicine in specific contexts, such as the treatment of women, children, and those with mental illness. Another important theme explored is the impact of religion and state institutions on the development, implementation, and results of medical care as experienced by real people in real life. Throughout, the book offers an international historical perspective, which allows for greater comparative and critical understanding of how different cultural beliefs influenced the development and management of health care.