Menstruation : a cultural history
"This collection brings menstruation into the new feminist history of the body. From Aristotle to twentieth-century gynaecological texts, the chapters analyse the ways in which menstruation has been understood inside and beyond Western culture. The twenty studies examine how mythical and scientific knowledges of the body work to produce popular notions about femaleness. They chart the ways in which the historical alteration of menstruation - from magical act through sign of lesser maleness, polluting spiritual weakness, index of sexed being, hygienic calamity, act of consumer flow, to pathological deficiency - has influenced and reflected our relationship with this most ideologically-laden form of blood. They reveal how many cultures and historical periods have pivoted notions of health and sexed identity on ideas about menstruation and expose that, through our cultural texts, we are talking about menstruation all the time."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2005
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, Hampshire [England], 2005
Cross-cultural studies
xiii, 298 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
9781403939357, 1403939357
58604610
Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments List of Figures Introduction: 'Talking your body's language': The Menstrual Materialisation of Sexed Ontology; A.Shail & G.Howie PART 1: SCIENCE AND MEDICINE Menses in the Corpus Hippocraticum ; L.Arata Menstruation in Aristotle's Concept of the Person; G.Hiltmann The Art and Science of Menstrual Balancing in Early Medieval China; S.Wilms Flowers, Poisons and Men: Menstruation in Medieval Western Europe; M.H.Green The Secrets of Women (c. 1300): A Medieval Perspective on Menstruation; B.Bildhauer Menstrual Knowledge and Medical Practice in Early Modern France, c. 1555-1761; C.McClive Menstruation and Sexual Difference in Early Modern Medicine; M.Stolberg 'I believe it to be a case depending on menstruation': Madness and Menstrual Taboo in British Medical Practice, c. 1840-1930; J-M.Strange Embryological and Agricultural Constructions of the Menstrual Cycle, 1890-1910; H.Blackman Of Sex, Nationalities and Populations: The Construction of Menstruation as a Patho-Physiology; Z.Meghani PART 2: MYTH AND CULTURE Menstrual Misogyny and Taboo: The Medusa, Vampire and the Female Stigmatic; M.Mulvey-Roberts The Swan Maiden's Flight Over Time: Rituals, Fairytales and Matriarchy; J.K.Thomas Menstruating Women/Menstruating Goddesses: Sites of Sacred Power in South India; D.E.Jenett Medieval Responsa Literature On Niddah : Perpetuations of Notions of Tumah ; H.Ner-David 'Let Him Pass for a Man': The Myth of Jewish Male Menstruation in The Merchant of Venice ; A.M.Balizet A Menstrual Lesson for Girls: Maria Edgeworth's "The Purple Jar"; H.Robbins 'A rag and a bone and a hank of hair': The Menstrual Background of "the Vampire"; A.Shail Masking Menstruation: The Emergence of Menstrual Hygiene Products in the United States; S.L.Vostral Blood, Laughter and the Medusa: The Gothic Heroine as Menstrual Monster; R.Munford PART 3: APPENDIX A Guide to Bibliographical and Archival Resources for the Study of the History of Menstruation; A.Shail Index