Details

Subject(s)

• Human body—Social aspects—Early modern, 1500-1700 [Browse]
• People with disabilities in art [Browse]
• People with disabilities in literature [Browse]
• People with disabilities—Social aspects—Early modern, 1500-1700 [Browse]

Issuing body

• Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan) [Browse]

Series

• Corporealities [More in this series]
• Corporealities: discourses of disability [More in this series]

Summary note

Monstrous Kinds is the first book to explore textual representations of disability in the global Renaissance. Elizabeth B. Bearden contends that monstrosity, as a precursor to modern concepts of disability, has much to teach about our tendency to inscribe disability with meaning. Understanding how early modern writers approached disability not only provides more accurate genealogies of disability, but also helps nuance current aesthetic and theoretical disability formulations. The book analyzes the cultural valences of early modern disability across a broad national and chronological span, attending to the specific bodily, spatial, and aesthetic systems that contributed to early modern literary representations of disability. The cross section of texts (including conduct books and treatises, travel writing and wonder books) is comparative, putting canonical European authors such as Castiglione into dialogue with transatlantic and Anglo-Ottoman literary exchange.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Source of description

Description based on information from publisher.

Contents

• Introduction
• The Ideal Monster: Disability, Courtliness, and Civilizing Body Talk
• Before Normal, There Was Natural: John Bulwer, Disability, and Natural Signing in England and Beyond
• Moctezuma's Zoo or Cortés's Courtiers: Geographies of Disability in Mexica and European Courts
• "Signing in the Seraglio": Global Disability in European Travel Accounts of the Ottoman Court
• "Unnaturall Order": Conjoined Twins and Monstrous Narration in the Wonder Book
• Coda

Show 4 more Contents items

Other title(s)

Body, space, and narrative in Renaissance representations of disability

ISBN

• 0472124587 (electronic book)
• 9780472124589 (electronic book)

OCLC

1076274686

Doi

• 10.3998/mpub.10014355
• 10.3998/mpub.10014355

Statement on language in description

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