Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama investigates the cultural work done by early modern theatrical performances of disability. Proffering an expansive view of early modern disability in performance, the contributors suggest methodologies for finding and interpreting it in unexpected contexts. The volume also includes essays on disabled actors whose performances are changing the meanings of disability in Shakespeare for present-day audiences. By combining these two areas of scholarship, this text makes a unique intervention in early modern studies and disability studies alike. Ultimately, the volume generates a conversation that locates and theorizes the staging of particular disabilities within their historical and literary contexts while considering continuity and change in the performance of disability between the early modern period and our own.

Autorentext

Leslie C. Dunn is Professor of English at Vassar College, USA, where she also teaches in the Women's Studies, Medieval/Renaissance Studies, and Media Studies programs. She co-edited two interdisciplinary collections, Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture (1994) and Gender and Song in Early Modern England (2014). Her research and teaching interests include Shakespeare and early modern drama, gender studies, and disability studies.

Klappentext

Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama investigates the cultural work done by early modern theatrical performances of disability. Proffering an expansive view of early modern disability in performance, the contributors suggest methodologies for finding and interpreting it in unexpected contexts. The volume also includes essays on disabled actors whose performances are changing the meanings of disability in Shakespeare for present-day audiences. By combining these two areas of scholarship, this text makes a unique intervention in early modern studies and disability studies alike. Ultimately, the volume generates a conversation that locates and theorizes the staging of particular disabilities within their historical and literary contexts while considering continuity and change in the performance of disability between the early modern period and our own.

Inhalt

PART 1: The Performance of Disability in Everyday Life

Chapter 1. Disability and the Work of Performance in Early Modern England 32

Lindsey Row-Heyveld

Chapter 2. By the Knife and Fire: Conceptions of Surgery and Disability in 53

Early Modern Medical Treatises

Jodie Austin

Chapter 3. 'Turn it to a Crutch': Disability and Swordsmanship in The Little 77

French Lawyer

Matthew Carter

Chapter 4. Mutism and Feminine Silence: Gender, Performance, and Disability 98

in Epicoene

Melissa Geil

Chapter 5. Contented Cuckolds: Infertility and Queer Reproductive Practice in 122

Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and Macchiavelli's Mandragola

Simone Chess

Chapter 6. Reading Shakespeare After Neurodiversity 148

Wes Folkerth

PART II: Disability as a Metaphor in Dramatic Literature

Chapter 7. Enabling Rabies in King Lear 168

Avi Mendelson

Chapter 8. Limping and Lameness on the Early Modern Stage 192

Susan Anderson

Chapter 9. Lame Humor in Beaumont and Fletcher's Love's Pilgrimage 217

Joyce Boro

Chapter 10. Syphilis Patches: Form and Disability History in The Knight of the 237

Burning Pestle

Nancy Simpson-Younger

PART III: The Work of Disabled Artists

Chapter 11. Sign Gain to Deaf Gain: Early Modern Manual Rhetoric and 256

Modern Shakespeare Performances

Jennifer Nelson

Chapter 12. 'This is miching mallecho. It means mischief': Problematizing 273 Representations of Act...