A Cultural History of Disability in the Middle Ages

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The Middle Ages was an era of dynamic social transformation, and notions of disability in medieval culture reflected how norms and forms of embodiment interacted with gender, class, and race, among other dimensions of human difference. Ideas of disability in courtly romance, saints lives, chronicles, sagas, secular lyrics, dramas, and pageants demonstrate the nuanced, and sometimes contradictory, relationship between cultural constructions of disability and the lived experience of impairment. An essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students of history, literature, visual art, cultural studies, and education, A Cultural History of Disability in the Middle Ages explores themes and topics such as atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; and mental health.

Author Bio

Jonathan Hsy is Associate Professor of English at The George Washington University, USA. His books include Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature (2013) and he has published widely on disability issues. Tory V. Pearman is Associate Professor of English at Miami University, USA. Her previous books include Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (2010) and Disability and Knighthood in Malorys Morte Darthur (2019). Joshua R. Eyler is Director of Faculty Development and Lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi, USA. His books include How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (2018) and Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations (2010).