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Book details

Generating Bodies And Gendered Selves

The Rhetoric of Reproduction in Early Modern England (In Vivo)

by Eve Keller

Published 2006248 pagesISBN 978-0-2959-8641-8

Generating Bodies and Gendered Selves examines the textured interrelations between medical writing about generation and childbirth - what we now call reproduction - and emerging notions of selfhood in early modern England. At a time when medical texts first appeared in English in large numbers and the first signs of modern medicine were emerging both in theory and in practice, medical discourse of the body was richly interwoven with cultural concerns. Through close readings of a wide range of English-language medical texts from the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, from learned anatomies and works of observational embryology to popular books of physic and commercial midwifery manuals, Keller looks at the particular assumptions about bodies and selves that medical language inevitably enfolds.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Philosophy, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.

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What the reading experience may hold

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Themes to notice

Nonfiction · Philosophy · Fiction

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Content notes

No specific content concerns can be confirmed from the available English catalog information. Consult a publisher or reader-supplied guide when detailed warnings matter.

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Reading experience

Balanced tone · Measured pace

A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.

Who it may suit

A good fit if…

Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.

At a glance

This book's DNA

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ToneBalanced
LuminousDark

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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc

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PeakRelative emotional intensity
Generating Bodies And Gendered SelvesEve Keller
Powerful4.5/5

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Before you choose

A quick reading snapshot

Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.

Reading lengthA shorter read248 pages in this edition
Publication eraModernFirst published or edition dated 2006
Primary categoryNonfictionAlso cataloged under Philosophy and Fiction
ISBN-13
978-0-2959-8641-8
Language
English
Edition record
OL10315164M
BookenDeX editorial lens

A more thoughtful way into this book

This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.

Good to know

A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.

Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.

Try this reading approach

Read for connection, not completion.

Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.

Three questions to carry with you

  1. Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
  2. Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
  3. How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?

Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.