'Maternity and Romance Narratives in Early Modern England makes a genuine contribution to scholarship in the fields of early modern literature, romance, and gender studies, particularly in its use of romance to explore ways in which the anxieties (and sometimes the veneration) of maternity may be managed.' Mary Ellen Lamb, Emeritus, Southern Illinois University, USA
Introduction: maternal devices and desires in early modern romance, Karen Bamford. Part I Managing Maternity: While she was sleeping: Spenser’s ‘goodly storie’ of Chrysogone, Susan C. Staub; Deferred motherhood in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Anne-Marie Strohman; ‘She made her courtiers learned’: Sir Philip Sidney, the Arcadia and his step-dame Elizabeth, Richard Wood; ‘As like Hermione as her picture’: the shadow of incest in The Winter’s Tale, Diane Purkiss; Shakespeare’s maternal transfigurations, Maria Del Sapio Garbero; ‘It hath happened all as I would have had it’: maternal desire in Shakespearean romances, Karen Bamford. Part II Voicing Maternity: Forcible love: performing maternity in Renaissance romance, Naomi J. Miller; ‘Thus did he make her breeding his only business and employment’: absent mothers and male mentors in Margaret Cavendish’s romances', Marianne Micros; The maternal rejection of romance, Julie A. Eckerle. Afterword: untellable tales, Clare R. Kinney; Index.