Disability in English Renaissance Literature
FAIN: FT-248806-16
Allison Hobgood
Willamette University (Salem, OR 97301-3922)
Completion of a book-length study of disability in English Renaissance literature.
My project excavates an archive of literary and other cultural texts to explore disability in Renaissance England. I argue that the drive to establish forms of physical and mental difference was a key shaping force in this period, and I give readers tools for grappling with mental and physical variation before the advent of "norms" as we know them. I read English Renaissance poetry and drama to uncover “early modern ideologies of ability”: to illuminate the “commonsense,” pervasive privileging of ablebodiedness in early modernity that energized a range of approaches to science, art, religion, and politics. I demonstrate how linguistic, spiritual, and intellectual capacities often aligned with Renaissance humanism and the Protestant Reformation were in fact reliant upon powerful fictions of ability. I reveal not only the diverse logics of ability operating in early modernity but illustrate the surprising ways these ableist norms were generative material for Renaissance writers.
Associated Products
Beholding Disability in Renaissance England (Book)Title: Beholding Disability in Renaissance England
Author: Allison Hobgood
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=472132369Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry (472132369)
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 472132369