The Variable Body in History

304 Pages·2016·4.16 MB·English

by  Chris Mounsey, ‎Stan Booth (eds.)

Q
T
H T H E V A R I A B L E B O D Y
The essays in this book explore the different ways the body has
E
been experienced and interpreted in history, from the medieval to
P I N H I S T O R Y
the modern period. Challenging the negative perceptions that the V
A
term ‘disability’ suggests, the essays together present a mosaic of
R
literary representations of bodies and accounts of real lives lived
I
in their particularity and peculiarity. The book does not attempt A
to be exhaustive, but rather it celebrates the fact that it is not. By B I
presenting a group of individual cases from different periods in L
E
history, the collection demonstrates that any overarching way of
B
describing bodies, or unifying description of the experience of the
O
myriad ways of being in a body, is reductive and unhelpful. The N
D
variability of each body in its context is our subject.
Y
I
N
Chris Mounsey worked for several years in theatre before an accident H F
and four months’ immobility, in which reading was the only possible
I
occupation, led to an academic career. Degrees in philosophy, comparative S
literature and English from the University of Warwick followed, and a T
doctorate on Blake founded an interest in the literature of the eighteenth O
O
century. Professor Mounsey, who now teaches at the University of R
Winchester, is author of Christopher Smart: Clown of God and Being the Body Y
of Christ and editor of Presenting Gender, Queer People, Developments in the
Histories of Sexualities and The Idea of Disability in the Eighteenth Century.
C
Stan Booth is a PhD student at the University of Winchester. He worked M
o
for many years as a local government manager advising members of the
u
n
community of a disadvantaged area of London. Seeing the credit crunch
s
e
coming and the obvious impact it would have, he returned to learning, y
a U
undertaking an MSc in Health and Disease and from there re-entered
n
d
academia. His doctoral project explores the discourse of physical paralysis B
in the eighteenth century with a cultural studies emphasis that allows scope o
Chris Mounsey and Stan Booth (eds)
o
to explore individuals and to go beyond the notion of the typical and the t
h
predicted models. ( S
e
d
s
)

ISBN 978-1-906165-72-7
1
www.peterlang.com Peter Lang
Q
T
H T H E V A R I A B L E B O D Y
The essays in this book explore the different ways the body has
E
been experienced and interpreted in history, from the medieval to
P I N H I S T O R Y
the modern period. Challenging the negative perceptions that the V
A
term ‘disability’ suggests, the essays together present a mosaic of
R
literary representations of bodies and accounts of real lives lived
I
in their particularity and peculiarity. The book does not attempt A
to be exhaustive, but rather it celebrates the fact that it is not. By B I
presenting a group of individual cases from different periods in L
E
history, the collection demonstrates that any overarching way of
B
describing bodies, or unifying description of the experience of the
O
myriad ways of being in a body, is reductive and unhelpful. The N
D
variability of each body in its context is our subject.
Y
I
N
Chris Mounsey worked for several years in theatre before an accident H F
and four months’ immobility, in which reading was the only possible
I
occupation, led to an academic career. Degrees in philosophy, comparative S
literature and English from the University of Warwick followed, and a T
doctorate on Blake founded an interest in the literature of the eighteenth O
O
century. Professor Mounsey, who now teaches at the University of R
Winchester, is author of Christopher Smart: Clown of God and Being the Body Y
of Christ and editor of Presenting Gender, Queer People, Developments in the
Histories of Sexualities and The Idea of Disability in the Eighteenth Century.
C
Stan Booth is a PhD student at the University of Winchester. He worked M
o
for many years as a local government manager advising members of the
u
n
community of a disadvantaged area of London. Seeing the credit crunch
s
e
coming and the obvious impact it would have, he returned to learning, y
a U
undertaking an MSc in Health and Disease and from there re-entered
n
d
academia. His doctoral project explores the discourse of physical paralysis B
in the eighteenth century with a cultural studies emphasis that allows scope o
Chris Mounsey and Stan Booth (eds)
o
to explore individuals and to go beyond the notion of the typical and the t
h
predicted models. ( S
e
d
s
)

1
www.peterlang.com Peter Lang
THE VARIABLE BODY
IN H ISTORY
QUEERING P ARADIGMS • I N F OCUS
Series Editor
Bee Scherer, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
THE VARIABLE BODY
IN HISTORY
Chris Mounsey and Stan Booth (eds)
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National­
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at http://dnb.d­nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942152
issn 2235­5367
isbn 978­1­906165­72­7 (print) • isbn 978­1­78707­100­1 (ePDF)
isbn 978­1­78707­101­8 (ePub) • isbn 978­1­78707­102­5 (mobi)
© Peter Lang AG 2016
Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,
52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom
[email protected], www.peterlang.com
Chris Mounsey and Stan Booth have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this Work.
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the
permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Chris Mounsey
Introduction: Speaking Forwards in History 1
Irina Metzler
In/Dis-Ability: A Medievalist’s Perspective 13
Adleen Crapo
The Possibility of an Island: Colonialism, Embodiment and
Utopia in Pre-Modern Literature 33
Emile Bojesen
‘This so low a purpose’: Richard Mulcaster and the Aims
of Public Education in Sixteenth-Century England 45
Kevin Berland
Thersites and Deformity 55
Chris Mounsey
Aphra Behn’s ‘Blind Lady’: Reading Impairment/Impairing
Reading 81
Simon Jarrett
Laughing about and Talking about the Idiot
in the Eighteenth Century 99
vi
Stan Booth
LESS is More: The Mysterious Case of the Invisible Countess
of Derby 127
Miriam L. Wallace
Improper Conjunctions: Scandalous Images and Dangerous
Bodies in ‘Crim. Con. Temptations with Prices Affix’d’ 147
Katharine Kittredge
The Blind Made Happy: Arcs of Reward and Redemption in
Early Modern Children’s Texts 171
Clare Walker Gore
‘The awful individuality of suffering’: Disabled Characterization
in Dinah Mulock Craik’s Olive and A Noble Life 203
Will Visconti
Constructing La Goulue: The Queer, the Criminal
and the Cancan 229
Epilogue
Bee Scherer
Variable Bodies, Buddhism and (No-)Selfhood: Towards
Dehegemonized Embodiment 247
Bibliography 265
Notes on Contributors 285
Index 289
Figures
Figure 7.1 L ondon Chronicle (London, England), Issue 5220
(14–16 January 1790). 133
Figure 8.1 I saac Cruikshank, “Crim. Con. Temptations with
the Prices Affixed”. 4 April 1796, by S. W. Fores.
Print on wove paper, etching, hand-colored,
platemark 35.1 × 48.2 cm on sheet 37 × 49 cm.
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library,
Yale University. 151
Figure 8.2 “ Crim. Con. Temptations with the Prices
Affixed!,” George Moutard Woodward, 4 April
1796. Engraving, hand-coloured. 13 3/8 in ×
18 1/16 in; 34 cm × 45.9 cm. Courtesy of Mount
Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley,
Massachusetts. Photography by Laura Shea.
Bequest of Helene Brosseau Black (Class of 1931). 157
Figure 8.3 “ Crim. Con. Temptations with the Prices
Affixed!,” George Moutard Woodward, 1796.
Pencil. 13 in × 18 5/8 in; 33.02 cm × 47.3075 cm.
Courtesy of Mount Holyoke College Art
Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Photography by Laura Shea. Bequest of Helene
Brosseau Black (Class of 1931). 158
Figure 8.4 A nonymous, ‘Caricature Shop’, London, 1801.
Publisher: Piercy Roberts. Etching with stipple on
wove paper. 25.8 × 32.6 cm. Courtesy of the Lewis
Walpole Library, Yale University. 167