El tratamiento de los “monstrous births” en tratados obstétricos ingleses del siglo XVII: entre el relato de prodigios y el texto científico

  • Alicia Rodríguez-Álvarez Instituto Universitario de Análisis y Aplicaciones Textuales, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Palavras-chave: nascimentos monstruosos, obstetrícia, séc. XVII, livros de prodígios, baladas, panfletos

Resumo

Este texto analisa o tratamento dos chamados “monstrous births” nos tratados de obstetrícia ingleses refigidos ao longo do século XVII. O estudo irá demonstrar que se pode distinguir um primeiro grupo de tratados com descrições detalhadas acompanhadas de ilustrações, próprias de baladas e de panfletos de caráter popular e com uma acentuada intenção sensacionalista, e um segundo grupo de tratados com interesse genuíno por este tipo de malformações que revelam a vontade científica de literatura médica da altura.

Referências

ANON. (1552), Thou shalte understande, Chrysten Reader, that the thyrde daye of August last past, Anno. M.CCCCCLII . . . in a towne called Myddleton stonye . . . at the In, called the Sygne of the Egle, there the good wyfe of the same, was deliuered of thys double Chylde, begotten of her late housbande John Kenner. London.
ANON. (1655), The True Portraiture of a Prodigious Monster, Taken in the Mountains of Zardana. London, printed for Iohn Andrews.
ANON. (1664), The True Picture of a Female Monster Born near Salisbury. London, printed for R. P.
ANON. (1684), Aristoteles Master-Piece, or The Secrets of Generation Displayed in All the Parts Thereof. London, printed for J. How.
ASMA, S. (2009), On Monsters. An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
BAILEY, N. (1737), An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. London, printed for D. Midwinter.
BARNES, G. (2012), “Traditions of the monstrous in William Dampier’s New Holland”: J. A. HAYDEN (ed.) (2012), Travel Narratives, the New Science, and Literary Discourse, 1569-1750. Surrey, Ashgate, 87-101.
BATES, A. W. (2000), “Birth defects described in Elizabethan ballads”: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 93 (2000) 202-207.
BATES, A. W. (2005a), Emblematic Monsters. Unnatural Conceptions and Defor-med Births in Early Modern Europe. London, The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine.
BATES, A. W. (2005b), “Good, common, regular, and orderly: early modern classi-fication of monstrous births”: Social History of Medicine 18 (2) (2005) 141 158.
BEARDEN, E. B. (2019), Monstrous Kinds. Body, Space, and Narrative in Renaissance Representations of Disability. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.
BOAISTUAU, P. (1569), Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature. Imprinted at London: by Henry Bynneman.
BRAIDOTTI, R. (1999), “Signs of wonder and traces of doubt: on teratology and embodied differences”: J. PRICE & M. SHILDRICK (eds.) (1999), Feminist Theory and the Body. A Reader. New York, Routledge, 290- 301.
BRAMMALL, K. M. (1996), Discussions of Abnormality and Deformity in Early Modern England, with Particular Reference to the Notion of Monstrosity. Tesis doctoral inédita, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
CECCONI, E. (2020), “Paratext and ideology in 17th-century news genres. A com-parative discourse analysis of paratextual elements in news broadside ballads and occasional news pamphlets”: M. PEIKOLA & B. BÖS (eds.) (2020), The Dynamics of Text and Framing Phenomena. Historical approaches to paratext and meta-discourse in English. Amsterdam / Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 137-185.
COOPER, TH. (1578), Thesaurus linguæ Romanæ Britannicæ. Impressum Londini.
COTGRAVE, R. (1611), A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London, printed by Adam Islip.
CROOKE, H. (1615), Mikrokosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man. London, printed by William Iaggard.
CULPEPER, N. (1651), A Directory for Midwives: Or, A Guide for Women, in their Conception, Bearing, and Suckling their Children. London, printed by Peter Cole.
CULPEPER, N. (1662), Culpeper’s Directory for Midwives: or, a Guide for Women. The Second Part. London, printed by Peter Cole.
DANFORTH, W. C. (1942), “The influence of the French School in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries upon the development of gynecology and obstetrics”: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 44 (5) (1942) 743-761.
DASTON, L. & PARK, K. (1998), Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750. New York, Zone Books.
DAVIES, S. (2013), “The unlucky, the bad and the ugly: categories of mons-trosity from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment”: A. S. MITTMAN & P. J. DENDLE (eds.) (2013), The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. Surrey, England, Ashgate, 49-75.
DOMÍNGUEZ-RODRÍGUEZ, M. V. & RODRÍGUEZ-ÁLVAREZ, A. (2020), “’All which I offer with my own experience’. An approach to persuasive advertising strategies in the prefatory matter of 17th-century English midwifery treatises”: M. PEIKOLA & B. BÖS (eds.) (2020), The Dynamics of Text and Framing Phenomena. Historical approaches to paratext and metadiscourse in English. Amsterdam / Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 163-185.
DUNN, P. M. (2004), “Louise Bourgeois (1563-1636): royal midwife of France”: Archives of Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition 89 (2004) F185-F187.
DUROSELLE-MELISH, C. (2001), “A telling of wonders: teratology in Western medicine”: The Watermark. Newsletter of the Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences 24 (4) 41-47.
EEBO = Early English Books Online. ProQuest. Ann Arbor, Michigan [última consulta enero 2021].
ESTC = English Short Title Catalogue. British Library. [última consulta enero 2021].
FISCHER, S. R. (2003), A History of Reading. London, Reaktion Books.
FLORIO, J. (1611), Queen Anna’s new world of words, or dictionarie of the Italian and English tongues. London, printed by Melch. Bradwood.
GLENISTER, T. W. (1964), “Fantasies, facts and foetuses. The interplay of fancy and reason in teratology”: Medical History 8 (1964) 15-30.
GREEN, M. H. (2008a), Making Women’s Medicine Masculine. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
GREEN, M. H. (2008b), “Gendering the history of women’s healthcare”: Gender & History 20 (3) (2008) 487-518.
GUILLEMEAU, J. (1612), Child-birth or, The Happy deliuerie of Women. London, printed by A. Hatfield.
HIBBARD, B. (2000), The Obstetrician’s Armamentarium. Historical Obstetric Instruments and Their Inventors. San Anselmo, California, Norman Publishing.
HODGEN, M. T. (1964), Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
JANSSENS, E. L. E. (2020), “Louder than words: Broadsheets as agents in a multimedial society”: Forum for Modern Language Studies 57 (1) (2020) 114-137.
KERSEY, J. (1702), A new English dictionary. London, printed for Henry Bonwicke.
LYKOSTHENES, K. (1581), The Doome Warning all Men to the iudgement. London: imprinted by Ralphe Nubery.
MASSARIA, A. (1657), De Morbis Fœmineis, The Womans Counsellour: or, The Fe-minine Physitian. London, printed for John Streater.
MAURICEAU, F. (1672), The Diseases of Women with Child, and in Child-Bed. London, printed by John Darby.
MACMATH, J. (1694), The Expert Mid-Wife. Edinburgh, printed by George Mosman.
MANUEL CUENCA, C. (1986), “Elementos fantásticos en Los viajes de Juan de Mandeville”: Atlantis 8 (1-2) (1986) 21-35.
MOXON, J. (1679), Mathematicks Made Easie: Or, a Mathematical Dictionary. London, printed for Joseph Moxon.
NURSE, J. (2015), “The scholarly midwife”: Blog de la Wellcome Library, [última consulta febrero 2020].
PALSGRAVE, J. (1530), Lesclarciment de la langue francoyse. [London?], the imprinttyng fynysshed by Iohan Haukyns.
PARÉ, A. (1634), The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey translated out of Latine. London, printed by Th: Cotes and R. Young.
PARK, K. Y DASTON, L. J. (1981), “Unnatural conceptions: the study of mons-ters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France and England”: Past & Present 92 (1981) 20-54.
PIPKIN, S. (2017), “Ambroise Paré’s medical monsters”: Blog de la Wellcome Library, [última consulta enero 2021].
PRICE, L. (1639), A Monstrous Shape, or a Shapelesse Monster. [London] printed by M. F.
RICHARDS, J. (2015), “Reading and hearing The Womans Booke in early modern England”: Bulletin of the History of Medicine 89 (2015) 434-462.
RÜFF, J. (1637), The Expert Midwife, or An Excellent and Most Neccesary Treatise of the Generation and Birth of Man. London, printed by E. G.
RUHRÄH, J. (1931), “Jacques Guillemeau 1550-1612”: American Journal of Diseases of Children 41 (5) (1931) 1172-1178.
SADLER, J. (1636), The Sicke Womans Private Looking-Glasse. London, printed by Anne Griffin.
SAINT-HILAIRE, G. DE (1832), Histoire Génerale et Particuliére des Anomalies de l’Organization Chez l’Homme et les Animaux. Paris, J.B. Ballière.
SHARP, J. (1671), The Midwives Book. Or the Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered. London, printed for Simon Miller.
THOMAS, TH. (1587), Dictionarium Linguæ Latinæ et Anglicanæ. Cantebrigiæ, Ex oficina Thomæ Thomasii.
WILKINS, J. (1568), An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language. London, Printed for Sa. Gellibrand, and for John Martyn.
ZIKA, CH. (2007), The Appearance of Witchcraft. Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. London / New York, Routledge.
Publicado
2021-04-13