Motherhood in literature and culture: interdisciplinary perspectives from Europe PDF
Preview Motherhood in literature and culture: interdisciplinary perspectives from Europe
Motherhood in Literature and Culture Motherhood remains a complex and contested issue in feminist research as well as public discussion. This interdisciplinary volume explores cul tural representations of motherhood in various contemporary European contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and it considers how such representations affect the ways in which dif ferent individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but it also includes essays that examine representations of motherhood in philos ophy, art, social policy, and film. The book’s driving contention is that, through intersecting with other fields and disciplines, literature and the study of literature have an important role to play in nuancing dialogues around motherhood, by offering challenging insights and imaginative responses to complex problems and experiences. This is demonstrated throughout the volume, which covers a range of topics including: dis cursive and visual depictions of pregnancy and birth; the impact of new reproductive technologies on changing family configurations; the relationship between mothering and citizenship; the shaping of policy imperatives regarding mothering and disability; and the difficult reali ties of miscarriage, child death, violence, and infanticide. The collection expands and complicates hegemonic notions of motherhood, as the au thors map and analyse shifting conceptions of maternal subjectivity and embodiment, explore some of the constraining and/or enabling contexts in which mothering takes place, and ask searching questions about what it means to be a ‘mother’ in Europe today. It will be of interest not only to those working in gender, women’s and feminist studies, but also to scholars in literary and cultural studies, and those researching in socio logy, criminology, politics, psychology, medical ethics, midwifery, and related fields. Gill Rye is Professor Emerita at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, UK. Victoria Browne is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Adalgisa Giorgio is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies in the Depart ment of Politics, Languages and International Studies of the University of Bath, UK. Emily Jeremiah is Senior Lecturer in German and Gender Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Abigail Lee Six is Professor of Spanish at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. This page intentionally left blank Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com. 71 Hospitality in American Literature and Culture Spaces, Bodies, Borders Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo and Jesús Benito Sánchez 72 Transcultural Poetics and the Concept of the Poet From Philip Sidney to T.S. Eliot Ranjan Ghosh 73 Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities Literary Retrofuturisms, Media Archaeologies, Alternate Histories Roger Whitson 74 Food and Foodways in African Narratives Community, Culture, and Heritage Jonathan Bishop Highfield 75 The Phenomenology of Autobiography Making it Real Arnaud Schmitt 76 The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism in Public Discourse, Literature, and Film Narrating Terror Michael C. Frank 77 The Centrality of Crime Fiction in American Literary Culture Edited by Alfred Bendixen and Olivia Carr Edenfield 78 Motherhood in Literature and Culture Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe Edited by Gill Rye, Victoria Browne, Adalgisa Giorgio, Emily Jeremiah, and Abigail Lee Six Motherhood in Literature and Culture Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe Edited by Gill Rye, Victoria Browne, Adalgisa Giorgio, Emily Jeremiah, and Abigail Lee Six First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 9781138648173 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315626581 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Contents Acknowledgements xi Foreword xiii LISA BARAITSER Introduction: Motherhood in Literature and Culture 1 GILL RYE, VICTORIA BROWNE, ADALGISA GIORGIO, EMILY JEREMIAH, AND ABIGAIL LEE SIX PART I Pregnancy and Birth 15 1 Birth Fear and the Subjugation of Women’s Strength: Towards a Broader Conceptualization of Femininity in Birth 17 SUSANNAH SWEETMAN 2 The Temporalities of Pregnancy: On Contingency, Loss, and Waiting 33 VICTORIA BROWNE 3 An (Un)familiar Story: Exploring Ultrasound Poems by Contemporary British Women Writers 46 EMILY BLEWITT 4 Birthing Tales and Collective Memory in Recent French Fiction 58 VALERIE WORTHSTYLIANOU viii Contents 5 Natality, Materiality, Maternity: The Sublime and the Grotesque in Contemporary Sculpture 70 CHRISTINE BATTERSBY PART II Generation and Relation 83 6 Erasing Mother, Seeking Father: Biotechnological Interventions, Anxieties over Motherhood, and Donor Offspring’s Narratives of Self 85 GABRIELE GRIFFIN 7 Mums or Dads? Lesbian Mothers in France 98 GILL RYE 8 The Kinning of the Transnationally Adopted Child in Contemporary Norway 111 SIGNE HOWELL 9 Ties That Bind in Tanja Dückers’s Novel Himmelskörper: History, Memory, and Making Sense of Motherhood in Twenty-First-Century Germany 124 KATHERINE STONE 10 Matrixial Creativity and the Wit(h)nessing of Trauma: Reconnecting Mothers and Daughters in Marosia Castaldi’s Novel Dentro le mie mani le tue: Tetralogia di Nightwater 137 ADALGISA GIORGIO PART III Experience and Affect 151 11 Publicizing Vulnerability: Motherhood and Affect in Joanna Rajkowska’s Post-2011 Art 153 JUSTYNA WIERzCHOWSKA 12 Present and Obscured: Disabled Women as Mothers in Social Policy 169 HARRIET CLARKE Contents ix 13 Nuria C. Botey’s Short Story ‘Viviendo con el tío Roy’: Motherhood and Risk Assessment under Duress 184 ABIGAIL LEE SIX 14 Broken Nights, Shattered Selves: Maternal Ambivalence and the Ethics of Interruption in Sarah Moss’s Novel Night Waking 197 EMILY JEREMIAH 15 Uncertain Mothers: Maternal Ambivalence in Alina Marazzi’s Film Tutto parla di te 210 CLAUDIA KARAGOz 16 ‘How to Say Hello to the Sea’: Literary Perspectives on Medico-Legal Narratives of Maternal Filicide 223 RUTH CAIN PART IV Reflections 239 17 To Be or Not To Be (a Mother): Telling Academic and Personal Stories of Mothers and Others 241 GAYLE LETHERBY 18 Last Will and Testament: Potatoes, Love, and Poetry 256 ANA LUíSA AMARAL List of Contributors 269 Index 275
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