Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Illustrations ix
4. Acknowledgments xiii
5. Preface xv
6. THE SECRETS OF GENERATION 1
7. Introduction 3
8. Part One: Generation, Species, Breeding1
9. 1. Reproducing Species 37
10. 2. Cultures and Politics of Preformationism in Eighteenth-Century Italy 59
11. 3. Theories of Generation and the History of Life 79
12. 4. Born to Virtue: Ideas of Generation and the Eighteenth-Century Elites 100
13. 5. Improving Reproduction: Articulations of Breeding and “Race-Mixing” in French and German Discourse (1750–1800) 120
14. 6. New Attention to Incest and Inbreeding as Ways of Reproduction around 1800: A Case Study of the Mignon Episode in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister 141
15. Part Two: Fetus, Child, Mother
16. 7. Changing Views on Generation – Images of the Unborn 167
17. 8. The Problem of Maternal Violence: Anatomy, Forensic Medicine, and the Mind 195
18. 9. Birth Anomaly and Childhood Disability 217
19. 10. Motherhood, Hysteria, and the Eighteenth-Century Woman Writer 238
20. 11. Mothers and Others: The Politics of Lactation in Medical Consultation Letters Addressed to Samuel-Auguste Tissot 258
21. 12. Reproduction in British Women’s Novels of the 1790s 278
22. Part Three: Pathologies, Body Parts, Display
23. 13. “Unfit for Generation”: Body Size and Reproduction 299
24. 14. Deformity of the Maternal Pelvis in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain 319
25. 15. The Debris of Life: Diseased Ovaries in Eighteenth-Century Medicine 344
26. 16. Intestinal Chaos: Tapeworms, Dead Flesh, and Reproduction during the Eighteenth Century 364
27. 17. A Bit Exposed: Displays of Male Genitals 386
28. Part Four: Attitudes, Tropes, Satire
29. 18. The Aristotle Texts, Sex, and the American Woman 417
30. 19. Eve’s Choices: Procreation, Reproduction, and the Politics of Generation in Paradise Lost 438
31. 20. Making Babies: Eighteenth-Century Attitudes towards Conception, Reproduction, and Childbirth 458
32. 21. Making the Rounds in the Old and New Foundling Hospitals for Wit: (Mis)Conceptions about Conceiving 477
33. 22. Panspermist Jokes, Reproductive Technologies, and Virgin Births: Some Enlightenment Luciniades 500
34. Contributors 531
35. Index 533