Disability in the Middle Ages

Joshua R. Eyler is an Assistant Professor of English at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, USA.

Contents: Introduction: breaking boundaries, building bridges, Joshua R. Eyler; Part 1 Reconsiderations: Disability and the suppression of historical identity: rediscovering the professional backgrounds of the blind residents of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts, Mark P. O'Tool; 'O sweete venym queynte!': pregnancy and the disabled female body in the Merchant's Tale, Tory Vandeventer Pearman; Playing by ear: compensation, reclamation, and prosthesis in 14th-century song, Julie Singer; Representations of disability in the 13th-century Miracles de Saint Louis, Hannah Skoda; The exemplary blindness of Francis of Assisi, Scott Wells; Experience, authority, and the mediation of deafness: Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Edna Edith Sayers; Protecting or restraining? Madness as a disability in late medieval France, Aleksandra Pfau; Representations of disability:the medieval literary tradition of the Fisher King, Kisha G. Tracy; 'Ther is moore mysshapen amonges thise beggeres': discourses of disability in Piers Plowman, Jennifer M. Gianfalla; Kingly impairments in Anglo-Saxon literature: God's curse and God's blessing, Beth Tovey; Difference and disability: on the logic of naming in the Icelandic sagas, John P. Sexton. Part 2 Reverberations: Henryson's textual and narrative prosthesis onto Chaucer's corpus: Cresseid's leprosy and her schort conclusioun, Andrew Higl; A medieval king 'disabled' by an early modern construct: a contextual examination of Richard III, Abigail Elizabeth Comber; Aging women and disability in early modern Spanish literature, Encarnación Juárez-Almendros; Bibliography; Index.