Literature and Disability [Hardcover]

Literature and Disabilityintroduces readers to the field of disability studies and the ways in which a focus on issues of impairment and the representation of disability can provide new approaches to reading and writing about literary texts. Disability plays a central role in much of the most celebrated literature, yet it is only in recent years that literary criticism has begun to consider the aesthetic, ethical and literary challenges that this poses.

The author explores:

• key debates and issues in disability studies today
• different forms of impairment, with the aim of showing the diversity and ambiguity of the term disability
• the intersection between literary critical approaches to disability and feminist, post-colonial, and autobiographical writing
• genre and representations of disability in relation to literary forms including novels, short stories, poems, plays and life writing

This volume provides students and academics with an accessible overview of literary critical approaches to disability representation.

1. Disability Studies Now  2. An Introduction to Disability Studies  3. Literature and Disability  4. Physical Disability and the Novel  5. Deafness and Performance  6. Blindness and Short Fiction  7. Cognitive Difference and Narrative  8. Disability Life Writing  9. Voice and Poetry  Glossary

'Alice Halls Literature and Disability provides an excellent introduction to this new field by touching on the key areas and concepts with admirable clarity. The book will surely find its way onto the reading lists of literature courses around the world.'David Bolt, Director of the Centre for Culture & Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University, UK