The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability
This breakthrough volume of critical essays on Jane Eyre from a disability perspective provides fresh insight into Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel from a vantage point that is of growing academic and cultural importance. Contributors include many of the preeminent disability scholars publishing today, including a foreword by Lennard J. Davis.
 
Though an indisputable classic and a landmark text for critical voices from feminism to Marxism to postcolonialism, until now, Jane Eyre has never yet been fully explored from a disability perspective. Customarily, impairment in the novel has been read unproblematically as loss, an undesired deviance from a condition of regularity vital to stable closure of the marriage plot. In fact, the most visible aspects of disability in the novel have traditionally been understood in rather rudimentary symbolic terms—the blindness of Rochester and the “madness” of Bertha apparently standing in for other aspects of identity. The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability, resists this traditional reading of disability in the novel. Informed by a variety of perspectives—cultural studies, linguistics, and gender and film studies—the essays in this collection suggest surprising new interpretations, parsing the trope of the Blindman, investigating the embodiment of mental illness, and proposing an autistic identity for Jane Eyre. As the first volume of criticism dedicated to analyzing and theorizing the role of disability in a single literary text, The Madwoman and the Blindman is a model for how disability studies can open new conversation and critical thought within the literary canon.
 
1110982427
The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability
This breakthrough volume of critical essays on Jane Eyre from a disability perspective provides fresh insight into Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel from a vantage point that is of growing academic and cultural importance. Contributors include many of the preeminent disability scholars publishing today, including a foreword by Lennard J. Davis.
 
Though an indisputable classic and a landmark text for critical voices from feminism to Marxism to postcolonialism, until now, Jane Eyre has never yet been fully explored from a disability perspective. Customarily, impairment in the novel has been read unproblematically as loss, an undesired deviance from a condition of regularity vital to stable closure of the marriage plot. In fact, the most visible aspects of disability in the novel have traditionally been understood in rather rudimentary symbolic terms—the blindness of Rochester and the “madness” of Bertha apparently standing in for other aspects of identity. The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability, resists this traditional reading of disability in the novel. Informed by a variety of perspectives—cultural studies, linguistics, and gender and film studies—the essays in this collection suggest surprising new interpretations, parsing the trope of the Blindman, investigating the embodiment of mental illness, and proposing an autistic identity for Jane Eyre. As the first volume of criticism dedicated to analyzing and theorizing the role of disability in a single literary text, The Madwoman and the Blindman is a model for how disability studies can open new conversation and critical thought within the literary canon.
 
26.95 In Stock
The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability

The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability

The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability

The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability

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Overview

This breakthrough volume of critical essays on Jane Eyre from a disability perspective provides fresh insight into Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel from a vantage point that is of growing academic and cultural importance. Contributors include many of the preeminent disability scholars publishing today, including a foreword by Lennard J. Davis.
 
Though an indisputable classic and a landmark text for critical voices from feminism to Marxism to postcolonialism, until now, Jane Eyre has never yet been fully explored from a disability perspective. Customarily, impairment in the novel has been read unproblematically as loss, an undesired deviance from a condition of regularity vital to stable closure of the marriage plot. In fact, the most visible aspects of disability in the novel have traditionally been understood in rather rudimentary symbolic terms—the blindness of Rochester and the “madness” of Bertha apparently standing in for other aspects of identity. The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability, resists this traditional reading of disability in the novel. Informed by a variety of perspectives—cultural studies, linguistics, and gender and film studies—the essays in this collection suggest surprising new interpretations, parsing the trope of the Blindman, investigating the embodiment of mental illness, and proposing an autistic identity for Jane Eyre. As the first volume of criticism dedicated to analyzing and theorizing the role of disability in a single literary text, The Madwoman and the Blindman is a model for how disability studies can open new conversation and critical thought within the literary canon.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814252260
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Publication date: 03/01/2016
Edition description: 1
Pages: 212
Product dimensions: (w) x (h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

David Bolt is Director of the Centre for Culture & Disability Studies and lecturer in education at Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK. Elizabeth Donaldson is associate professor of English at New York Institute of Technology. Julia Miele Rodas is assistant professor of English at Bronx Community College.

Table of Contents

Introduction · The Madwoman and the Blindman

Chapter 1 · The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward a Feminist Disability Studies Theory of Embodiment and Mental Illness

Chapter 2 · The Blindman in the Classic: Feminisms, Ocularcentrism, and Jane Eyre

Chapter 3 · “On the Spectrum”: Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre

Chapter 4 · From India-Rubber Back to Flesh: A Reevaluation of Male Embodiment in Jane Eyre

Chapter 5 · From Custodial Care to Caring Labor: The Discourse of Who Cares in Jane Eyre

Chapter 6 · “I Began to See”: Biblical Models of Disability in Jane Eyre

Chapter 7 · Illness, Disability, and Recognition in Jane Eyre

Chapter 8 · Visions of Rochester: Screening Desire and Disability in Jane Eyre

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