Dissembling Disability in Early Modern English Drama

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-319-92134-1
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 244 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Literary Disability Studies

Why do able-bodied characters fake disability in 40 early modern English plays? This book uncovers a previously unexamined theatrical tradition and explores the way counterfeit disability captivated the Renaissance stage. Through detailed case studies of both lesser-known and canonical plays (by Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston, and others), Lindsey Row-Heyveld demonstrates why counterfeit disability proved so useful to early modern playwrights. Changing approaches to almsgiving in the English Reformation led to increasing concerns about feigned disability. The theater capitalized on those concerns, using the counterfeit-disability tradition to explore issues of charity, epistemology, and spectatorship. By illuminating this neglected tradition, this book fills an important gap in both disability history and literary studies, and explores how fears of counterfeit disability created a feedback loop of performance and suspicion. The result is the still-pervasive insistence that even genuinely disabled people must perform in order to, paradoxically, prove the authenticity of their impairments.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Row-Heyveld, Lindsey

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Dramen und Dramatiker
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theatergeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Invalidität, Krankheit und Abhängigkeit: Soziale Aspekte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Dissembling Disability in Early Modern England.- 2. Act the Fool: Antonio's Revenge and the Conventions of the Counterfeit-Disability Tradition.- 3. Double Dissimulation: Counterfeit Disability in Bartholomew Fair.- 4. Feminized Disability and Disabled Femininity in Fair Em and The Pilgrim.- 5. Rules of Charity: Richard III and the Counterfeit-Disability Tradition.- 6. Mandated Masquerade: Disability, Metatheater, and Audience Complicity in The Fair Maid of the Exchange and What You Will.- 7. Conclusion: Early Modern Fantasies and Contemporary Realities.

Über Autor(innen)

Lindsey Row-Heyveld is Assistant Professor of English at Luther College in Decorah, USA.