Maternal Impressions: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Literature and Theory - Hardcover

Mazzoni, Cristina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801440351 ISBN 13: 9780801440359

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In an unusual combination of reflection, autobiography, theory, and criticism, Cristina Mazzoni looks at childbirth and early maternity from the perspective of an academic mother with three young children. Mazzoni draws upon examples ranging from contemporary advice manuals and novels to the work of turn-of-the-century Italian scientists and women writers, as well as fairy tales, religious texts, psychoanalytic accounts, and feminist theory. Throughout her investigations of the various forces that shape cultural views of pregnancy and childbirth, Mazzoni strives to imagine and deploy maternity as a concept and a reality capable of challenging conventional representations of subjectivity. The questions she addresses dwell on relationship and interdependence, the inseparability of the personal and the political, and the connections and interactions between bodies and power. Maternal Impressions is far more than a book of literary criticism and theory. It reveals the multiple bonds and continuities between the contradictory ways in which pregnancy and childbirth were represented a century ago and the manner in which they still haunt feminist experience today. In her conclusion, Mazzoni points toward a possible ethics of maternity.

About this title

Review

"Maternal Impressions is a powerful piece of writing that resonates with a number of crucial questions in contemporary culture, and treats an old topic in a refreshing and provocative way. Cristina Mazzoni writes with honesty and clarity."―Lynne Huffer, Rice University

"Maternal Impressions is an original and provocative book that theorizes and crosses the divide between feminist knowledge and feminist knowers. Cristina Mazzoni's unique interpretation of maternal experiences and female subjectivity in texts of science, popular culture, literature, feminist theory, fairytales, and psychoanalysis challenges most of our presuppositions about how to navigate diverse intellectual terrains with consciousness of ourselves at the origins of knowledge. Carefully researched and beautifully written, this book creates new and important conversations between U.S. and European specialists and non-specialists interested in theorizing maternal subjectivity as an integral part of human culture."―Stephanie Jed, University of California, San Diego

"Maternal Impressions is a beautifully researched and elegantly written interdisciplinary book that explores the contradictory perceptions, representations, and appropriations of motherhood and childbirth in modern culture. It will become a milestone of feminist criticism."―Lucia Re, University of California, Los Angeles

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0801440351
• ISBN 13: 9780801440359
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280