Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability

Description

Early attitudes toward blindness in France and England, and the light those responses shed on contemporary attitudes toward disability Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind presents the first comprehensive exploration of a disability in the Middle Ages, drawing on the literature, history, art history, and religious discourse of England and France. It relates current theories of disability to the cultural and institutional constructions of blindness in the eleventh through fifteenth centuries, examining the surprising differences in the treatment of blind people and the responses to blindness in these two countries. The book shows that pernicious attitudes about blindness were partially offset by innovations and ameliorations—social; literary; and, to an extent, medical—that began to foster a fuller understanding and acceptance of blindness. A number of practices and institutions in France, both positive and negative—blinding as punishment, the foundation of hospices for the blind, and some medical treatment—resulted in not only attitudes that commodified human sight but also inhumane satire against the blind in French literature, both secular and religious. Anglo-Saxon and later medieval England differed markedly in all three of these areas, and the less prominent position of blind people in society resulted in noticeably fewer cruel representations in literature. This book will interest students of literature, history, art history, and religion because it will provide clear contexts for considering any medieval artifact relating to blindness—a literary text, a historical document, a theological treatise, or a work of art. For some readers, the book will serve as an introduction to the field of disability studies, an area of increasing interest both within and outside of the academy. Cripping the middle ages, medievalizing disability theory -- Leading the blind : France versus England -- "Blind" jews and blind Christians : the metaphorics of marginalization -- Humoring the sighted : the comic embodiment of blindness -- Blinding, blindness, and sexual transgression -- Instructive interventions : miraculous chastisement and cure -- Medieval science and blindness : case studies of Jean L'Aveugle, Gilles Le Muisit, and John Audelay -- Afterword: the visibility of the blind in England and France.