The Knowing of Woman's Kind in Childing: A Middle English Trotula-Text
by A Barratt (9782503510736)

This study comprises a critical edition, using all the five extant MSS, of the most popular of the Middle English gynaecological texts deriving from the Latin Trotula-text. The Knowing of Women's Kind in Childing is a short fifteenth-century prose treatise which claims to be translated from Latin texts (or Latin and French, according to some manuscripts) that derive ultimately from the Greek. It has a unique importance as it was written by a woman, for a female audience, and on the subject of women. The text considers women's physical constitution, what makes them different from men (primarily the possession of a womb) and, in particular, the three types of problem that the womb causes. The text is a translation, no doubt by a man, but one of his ultimate sources was a text attributed to "Trotula," in the Middle Ages believed to be the name of a midwife or gynaecologist from Salerno, who wrote extensively on women's ailments, childbirth and beauty care. Alexandra Barratt is Professor of English at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

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