User:Dodger67/Sandbox/Disability in literature

The depiction of disability in literature has varied widely throughout history and across cultures. The way stories represent people with disabilities can be both a reflection of how a society views disability and a vehicle for perpetuating, or occasionally challenging, stereotypes about disability.

Literary representations of disability can emphasise the exclusion and 'otherness' of disability. Moreover, representations of disability tend towards either negative stereotyping of disability or a romantic 'overcoming all odds' story, similar to the `supercrip' narrative attributed to Ware.

( A really good source for expanding the lead - http://illnessandcivilization.blogspot.com/2009/08/disability-in-literature-by-samuel.html )

Disabled characters in literature can often be sorted into a few stereotypes:
 * The hideous villain
 * The tragic victim (Dickens' Tiny Tim), "crippled beggars"
 * The triumphant hero
 * The holy fool

Pre-Classical
The Sumerian gods Enki and Ninmah, who created humans and assigned them jobs, gave work to several people with disabilities. Enki designated a man, who “could not bend his outstretched weak hands”, to be the king's servant. A blind man became a musician. A man with paralyzed feet was made a silversmith. An intellectually impaired or deaf man became a courier.

An ancient Egyptian text (British Museum Papyrus No. 10474) reads: "Beware of robbing a wretch or attacking a cripple. Do not laugh at a blind man, nor tease a dwarf, nor cause hardship for the lame. Don't tease a man who is in the hand of the god"(i.e. ill or insane).

Greek
In classical Greek literature there were three mythological figures who had disabilities. Hephaestus, the god of fire and artisans, was lame. His lameness was treated with humour in Homeric texts. Thersites was a fictional figure in the Illiad. He had a variety of deformities as a result of being punished by Odysseus. Described as vulgar, obscene and dull-witted, Odysseus hit him with Agamemnon's sceptre when he insulted Achilles and Agamemnon. Teiresias was a blind prophet of Zeus, various stories tell that he became blind as punishment for revealing secrets of the gods.

Roman
Mythology, philosophers, etc

Source: http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:269567 (requires academic library access)

Renaissance
Italian, French, etc Shakespeare

19th century
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Dickens' "Tiny Tim"

Post-modern
Proposed theme: Late 20th century to the present - Literature in the disability rights era

The novel Me Before You was made into a movie which attracted protest from disability rights activists who described it as a "disability snuff movie".

South Asian literature
possible source: http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200807.html#south_asia

East Asian literature
Bibliography here may be of use: http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200807.html#east_asia

China
Subdivide by dynastic era or whatever makes most sense in terms of the literary traditions

African literature
No pre-colonial literature as such exists but the oral tradition of various African cultures is fairly well covered in ethnographies. A possible exception is Coptic literature from before the Arabic/Islamic era in North and East Africa.

Pre-Columbian
(Inca, Aztec, Maya, North American nations, etc)

(From the conquest era onwards the literature can probably be grouped with the "Western" under Renaissance, Enlightenment, etc unless it is clearly a continuation of Pre-Columbian native tradition separate from the western "mainstream" tradition.)

Native American
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/haa/summary/v002/2.landsman.html

Hispanic
Maybe this is a useful subdivision, maybe not; it depends on how distinct the Hispanic literary tradition is from "mainstream" western discourse.

Maori
Possible sources:
 * http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20112420
 * http://ojs.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/viewArticle/237