Shakespeare, Tragedy and Menopause

Shakespeare, Tragedy and Menopause PDF Author: Victoria L. McMahon
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031272048
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Shakespeare was not only aware of the socio-cultural fears and anxieties generated by the older woman’s body but with the characterization of his tragic ageing females, Shakespeare becomes the first literary giant to explore the physiological and psychosocial condition that we have come to know as ‘menopause’. Although ‘menopause’ was not defined as a medical, physiological or sociocultural event for the early moderns, this book argues that such a medical and cultural transition can, in fact, be identified by sub-textual clues distinguished by various embodied anxieties. It explores several ageing women of the Shakespearean tragedies as they transition through this liminal menopausal period. Theoretically underscored by humoral theory, the analysis is metonymically centered upon the womb as the seat of menopausal anxiety. These menopausal undercurrents, not only permeate the dramatic action of each play, but also emanate outward to reflect the medical, physiological, cultural, social, and religious concerns generated by the ageing woman of the early modern period at large.

Shakespeare, Tragedy and Menopause

Shakespeare, Tragedy and Menopause PDF Author: Victoria L. McMahon
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031272048
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shakespeare was not only aware of the socio-cultural fears and anxieties generated by the older woman’s body but with the characterization of his tragic ageing females, Shakespeare becomes the first literary giant to explore the physiological and psychosocial condition that we have come to know as ‘menopause’. Although ‘menopause’ was not defined as a medical, physiological or sociocultural event for the early moderns, this book argues that such a medical and cultural transition can, in fact, be identified by sub-textual clues distinguished by various embodied anxieties. It explores several ageing women of the Shakespearean tragedies as they transition through this liminal menopausal period. Theoretically underscored by humoral theory, the analysis is metonymically centered upon the womb as the seat of menopausal anxiety. These menopausal undercurrents, not only permeate the dramatic action of each play, but also emanate outward to reflect the medical, physiological, cultural, social, and religious concerns generated by the ageing woman of the early modern period at large.

Women’s Health and Menopause

Women’s Health and Menopause PDF Author: Rodolfo Paoletti
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0585379734
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The population structure in the world is rapidly changing, to the extent that in 75 years we will face a tripling of the elderly population. Although women are favored in terms of life expectancy, they also live with a longer period of disability (approximately twice that of aging men), as well as with the enemies of all the elderly, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and dementia. Menopause is the endocrine event that overlaps with aging, potentially worsening both the quality of life and the risks of disease in women.While the effect of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on menopausal symptoms is generally viewed as rapid and consistent, and is thereby accepted by the scientific community, its relationship to the other aforementioned chronic conditions associated with menopause is considered variable and controversial.In analyzing these complex issues, this volume yields new and significant insights into both the study of menopause-related disorders and their treatment, by illustrating the most recent information on mechanisms of actions of new estrogen receptors and on the use of sophisticated techniques of statistical analysis for population-based studies.

The Menopause

The Menopause PDF Author: H.J. Buchsbaum
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461255252
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Nearly one-half of an American woman's life is spent after the cessation of reproductive function. A woman of 40 years has an additional life expectancy of nearly 40 years; a woman of 75, over 11 years. This pattern of longevity is likely to continue, so that by the year 2000, it has been estimated, 30 percent of the female population will be postmenopausal. While it is difficult to separate the results of aging from those of estrogen deprivation, it is important that we try to do so, since the results of the latter are amenable to treatment. The medical infirmities resulting from estrogen deprivation take a high toll among postmenopausal women. Nearly 200,000 hip fractures occur annually in this group, resulting in 15,000 deaths and a high morbidity rate. Sleep disorders, compromised sexuality, psychomotor alterations of the climacterium, and urinary tract disorders all contribute to a lowered quality of life. Appropriate treatment of these disturbing postmenopausal conditions requires an understanding of the underlying bio chemical, endocrinologic, psychologic, and pathophysiologic al terations of estrogen deprivation. Toward this end, the reader will find herein chapters dealing with estrogen metabolism in the postmenopausal female, end-organ response to estrogen deprivation, and bone metabolism and osteoporosis. Next, the reader will find chapters dealing with specific or gans, organ systems, or conditions related to the quality of life; for example, sexuality, urinary tract problems, sleep disorders, the breast, sports and exercise, the climacteric, and the psycho biology of the menopause.

Hamlet’s Hereditary Queen

Hamlet’s Hereditary Queen PDF Author: Kerrie Roberts
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000821358
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This book explores a fresh and insightful interpretation of Hamlet’s Gertrude as a prominent and powerful figure in the play. It shows how traditional readings of this character, both performance-based and scholarly, have been guided and constrained by misogynistic perspectives on female power. Bringing together the author’s wealth of insight from a theatre practitioner’s perspective and combining it with a scholarly perspective, the book argues that Gertrude need not be limited to sex and motherhood. She could instead be played as Denmark’s blood royal Queen, her role in the play then being about female political power. Gertrude’s royal status could play out on stage through a variety of possible performance choices for stage design, stage business, acting processes, and the actor’s presence – both speaking and silent. Hamlet's Hereditary Queen takes into consideration Shakespeare’s source myths, historical studies of the position of queens and the issues concerning them in early modern England, Hamlet’s performance history, and the text itself. It questions traditional readings of Hamlet, and offers detailed analyses of relevant scenes to demonstrate how Gertrude’s Hamlet might play out on stage in the twenty-first century. This is an engaging and insightful interpretation for students and scholars of theatre and performance studies and Shakespeare studies, as well as theatre practitioners.

The Long Life

The Long Life PDF Author: Helen Small
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615579
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The Long Life invites the reader to range widely from the writings of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, and others, and from Shakespeare's King Lear through works by Thomas Mann, Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, to more recent writing by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and J. M. Coetzee. Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practice philosophy - or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer - and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our thinking about old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? In a just society, what constitutes a fair distribution of limited resources between the young and the old? How, if at all, should recent developments in the theory of evolutionary senescence alter our thinking about what it means to grow old? This is a groundbreaking book, deep as well as broad, and likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old, and the growing proportion of the old to the young.

The Sister from Below

The Sister from Below PDF Author: Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Publisher: Fisher King Press
ISBN: 098103442X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Who is She, this Sister from Below? She's certainly not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you'll allow, She'll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She's a siren, a seductress, a shapeshifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life the evolution of Soul.

Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England

Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England PDF Author: S. Read
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137355034
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
In early modern English medicine, the balance of fluids in the body was seen as key to health. Menstruation was widely believed to regulate blood levels in the body and so was extensively discussed in medical texts. Sara Read examines all forms of literature, from plays and poems, to life-writing, and compares these texts with the medical theories.

The Science of Shakespeare

The Science of Shakespeare PDF Author: Dan Falk
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250008786
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
William Shakespeare lived at a remarkable time—a period we now recognize as the first phase of the Scientific Revolution. New ideas were transforming Western thought, the medieval was giving way to the modern, and the work of a few key figures hinted at the brave new world to come: the methodical and rational Galileo, the skeptical Montaigne, and—as Falk convincingly argues—Shakespeare, who observed human nature just as intently as the astronomers who studied the night sky. In The Science of Shakespeare, we meet a colorful cast of Renaissance thinkers, including Thomas Digges, who published the first English account of the "new astronomy" and lived in the same neighborhood as Shakespeare; Thomas Harriot—"England's Galileo"—who aimed a telescope at the night sky months ahead of his Italian counterpart; and Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, whose observatory-castle stood within sight of Elsinore, chosen by Shakespeare as the setting for Hamlet—and whose family crest happened to include the names "Rosencrans" and "Guildensteren." And then there's Galileo himself: As Falk shows, his telescopic observations may have influenced one of Shakespeare's final works. Dan Falk's The Science of Shakespeare explores the connections between the famous playwright and the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution—and how, together, they changed the world forever.

Darwinian Misadventures in the Humanities

Darwinian Misadventures in the Humanities PDF Author: Eugene Goodheart
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351523651
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
In recent decades the humanities have been in thrall to postmodern skepticism, while Darwinists, brimming with confidence in the genuine progress they have made in the sciences of biology and psychology, have set their sights on rescuing the humanities from the ravages of postmodernism. In this volume, Eugene Goodheart attacks the neo-Darwinist approach to the arts and articulates a powerful defense of humanist criticism. E. O. Wilson, the distinguished Harvard biologist, has spoken of converting philosophy into science, substituting science for religion, and formulating a biological theory of literature and the arts in Consilence: The Unity of Knowledge. Goodheart demonstrates that Wilson's efforts, and those of his colleagues Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and Daniel Dennett among others, have resulted in scientism rather than science. If, for example, Dawkins had contented himself in The Selfish Gene with the claim that Darwinism had made worthless other answers to the question of how we have evolved, he would have given offense only to creationists, but questions of meaning and purpose are of another order. Contemporary Darwinist critiques err in assuming that art and traditional criticism aspire to truths that can be codified in terms of scientific laws. If this were so, we would have to regard the speculations of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Rousseau as worthless. Goodheart exposes the philistinism of literary Darwinism, the bad faith and inverted fundamentalism of the Darwinian approach to religion, and the dangers of the eff ort to create a Darwinian ethical system. Taken together, Goodheart's arguments show that in moving beyond their area of competence, the neo -Darwinists commit an ideology, not a science.

New York Magazine

New York Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.