Richard III will always be central to English disability history as both man and mythâa disabled medieval king made into a monster by his nationâs most important artist. In Richard IIIâs Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity, Jeffrey Wilson tracks disability over 500 years, from Richardâs own manuscripts, early Tudor propaganda, and x-rays of sixteenth-century paintings through Shakespeareâs soliloquies, into Samuel Johnsonâs editorial notes, the first play produced by an African American Theater company, Freudian psychoanalysis, and the rise of disability theater. For Wilson, the changing meanings of disability created through shifting perspectives in Shakespeareâs plays prefigure a series of modern attempts to understand Richardâs body in different disciplinary contextsâfrom history and philosophy to sociology and medicine. While theorizing a role for Shakespeare in the field of disability history, Wilson reveals how Richard III has become an index for some of modernityâs central concernsâthe tension between appearance and reality, the conflict between individual will and external forces of nature and culture, the possibility of upward social mobility, and social interaction between self and other, including questions of discrimination, prejudice, hatred, oppression, power, and justice.
Price history
Oct 3, 2022
€33.64