The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability

413 Pages·2020·5.135 MB·English

by  Alice Hall

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THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO

LITERATURE AND DISABILITY
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability brings together some of the most influen-
tial and important contemporary perspectives in this growing field. The book traces the history
of the field and locates literary disability studies in the wider context of activism and theory.
It introduces debates about definitions of disability and explores intersectional approaches in
which disability is understood in relation to gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, and eth-
nicity. Divided broadly into sections according to literary genre, this is an important resource
for those interested in exploring and deepening their knowledge of the field of literature and
disability studies.
Alice Hall teaches in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of
York, UK. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has previously worked at
the University of Nottingham and the University of Paris (III and VII). Alice is the author of
Disability and Modern Fiction: Faulkner, Morrison, Coetzee and the Nobel Prize for Literature (2012)
and Literature and Disability: Contemporary Critical Thought (2015).
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ROUTLEDGE COMPANIONS TO LITERATURE
Also available in this series:
The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities
Edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen and Michelle Niemann
The Routledge Companion to International Children’s Literature
Edited by John Stephens, with Celia Abicalil Belmiro, Alice Curry, Li Lifang and Yasmine S. Motawy
The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks
Edited by Bettina Kümmerling- Meibauer
The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History
Edited by May Hawas
The Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing
Edited by Aroosa Kanwal and Saiyma Aslam
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics
Edited by Matt Seybold and Michelle Chihara
The Routledge Companion to Twenty- First Century Literary Fiction
Edited by Daniel O’Gorman and Robert Eaglestone
The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies
Edited by Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung and Takayuki Tatsumi
The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature
Edited by Dennis Denisoff and Talia Schaffer
The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities
Edited by Paul Crawford, Brian Brown and Andrea Charise
The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction
Edited by Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma
Edited by Hanna Meretoja and Colin Davis
For more information on this series, please visit:
www.routledge.com/ literature/ series/ RC4444
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THE ROUTLEDGE

COMPANION TO LITERATURE
AND DISABILITY
Edited by Alice Hall
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First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Alice Hall; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Alice Hall to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Hall, Alice (Literature professor), editor.
Title: The Routledge companion to literature and disability/edited by Alice Hall.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019057593 | ISBN 9781138043602 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315173047 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Disabilities in literature.
Classification: LCC PN56.D553 R68 2020 |
DDC 809/.933561–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057593
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 04360- 2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 17304- 7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
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CONTENTS

List of figures ix

List of contributors xi

Acknowledgements xvi

Introduction to The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability 1

Alice Hall
PART I
New directions in the field 7
1 Disability in Indigenous literature 9

Siobhan Senier
2 Disability in black speculative fiction 21

Sami Schalk
3 t4t: toward a crip ethics of trans literary criticism 31

Cameron Awkward- Rich
4 Challenging phonocentrism: writing signs and bilingual Deaf literatures 43

Kristen Harmon
5 “Here there be monsters”: mapping novel representations of the
relationship between disability and monstrosity in recent graphic
narratives and comic books 57

Chris Foss
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Contents
6 Spectrality, strangeness, and stigmaphilia: Gothic and critical
disability studies 70

Sara Wasson
7 Contemporary horror and disability: adaptations and active readers 82

Petra Kuppers
PART II
Novels and short stories 95
8 From “changelings” to “libtards”: intellectual disability in the eighteenth
century and beyond 97

D. Christopher Gabbard
9 Crip gothic: affiliations of disability and queerness in Horace Walpole’s
The Castle of Otranto (1764) 109

Jason S. Farr
10 “Of wonderful use to everyone”: disability and the marriage plot in the
nineteenth- century novel 120

Clare Walker Gore
11 Afro- modernism and black disability studies 132

Jess Waggoner
12 “What’s the matter with him?”: intellectual disability, Jewishness, and
stereotype in Bernard Malamud’s “Idiots First” 142

Howard Sklar
13 Metaphorical medicine: disability in Anglophone Indian fiction 156

Stephanie Yorke
14 Disability and contemporary literature: antinormative narratives
of embodiment 167

David T. Mitchell
PART III
Poetry 179
15 Poet and beggar: Edmund White’s Blindness 181

Vanessa Warne
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Contents
16 Deafness and modernism 193

Rebecca Sanchez
17 The “fury of loving joyfully”: Amelia Rosselli’s War Variations 203

Elizabeth Leake
18 Getting there: pain poetics and Canadian literature 212

Shane Neilson
19 Disability in contemporary poetry 224

Johanna Emeney
20 Disability poetry: testing the waters of definition 241

Michael Northen
PART IV
Drama 251
21 Canadian disability dramaturgies 253

Kirsty Johnston
22 Disability and the American stage musical 265

Samuel Yates
23 Of scapeghosts and men: Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes and the
politics of learning disability 276

Anna Harpin
24 Disability, drama, and the problem of intersectional invisibility 290

Ann M. Fox
25 Puppets, players and the poetics of vulnerability: Hijinx’s Meet Fred and
new directions in the theatres of learning disability 303

Matt Hargrave
PART V
Life writing 315
26 Sex, death, and the welfare check: rhythms of disability and sexuality in
David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives 317

Leon J. Hilton
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Contents
27 Disability narrative, embodied aesthetics and cross- media arts 327

Stella Bolaki
28 A grammar of touch: interdependencies of person, place, thing 343

Shannon Walters
29 Psychographics: graphic memoirs and psychiatric disability 353

Elizabeth J. Donaldson
30 Challenging the neurotypical: autism, contemporary literature, and
digital textualities 366

Hannah Tweed
Index 378

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ix
FIGURES

6.1 Deborah Padfield with Patrick Dixon from Deborah Padfield (2003) Perceptions
of Pain. Stockport: Dewi Lewis Publishing: p80. © Deborah Padfield,
reproduced by kind permission of Dewi Lewis. 77
6.2 Deborah Padfield with Nell Keddie from Deborah Padfield (2003) Perceptions
of Pain. Stockport: Dewi Lewis Publishing: p119. © Deborah Padfield,
reproduced by kind permission of Dewi Lewis. 78
6.3 Deborah Padfield with Nell Keddie from Deborah Padfield (2003) Perceptions
of Pain. Stockport: Dewi Lewis Publishing: p115. © Deborah Padfield,
reproduced by kind permission of Dewi Lewis. 79
12.1 Archetype of intellectual disability. 148
23.1 “Brotherly Doubles” in Dead Man’s Shoes, dir. Shane Meadows, Warp
Films (2004). 281
23.2 “Brotherly Doubles” in Dead Man’s Shoes, dir. Shane Meadows, Warp
Films (2004). 281
23.3 “Sonny” in Dead Man’s Shoes, dir. Shane Meadows, Warp Films (2004). 283
23.4 “Gypsy John” dead on the toilet in Dead Man’s Shoes, dir. Shane Meadows,
Warp Films (2004). 284
23.5 Murdered “Tuff” stuffed in a suitcase in Dead Man’s Shoes, dir. Shane
Meadows, Warp Films (2004). 284
27.1 Alison Stewart, Fabricback Novel (2010). Image by Egidija Čiricaitė. 329
27.2 Deborah Humm, The Variance, Vagaries and Extreme Randomness of MS (2015).
Image by Egidija Čiricaitė. 332
27.3 HOAX My Lonely Heart. Writer: Ravi Thornton © 2014. Director
(theatre): Benji Reid. Director (film): John Grey. Stills credit: John Grey
© 2017. Actors: Christopher Tendai playing Rob, Danny Solomon playing
The Condition. Producer: Ziggy’s Wish Ltd. 336
27.4 HOAX Psychosis Blues. Page 39, First Edition. Page 35, Second Edition.
Author: Ravi Thornton © 2014. Illustrator: Karrie Fransman © 2014.
Chapter: A Desolate Spot. Publisher: Ziggy’s Wish Ltd. 338
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