Disability, impairment and embodied difference in late-medieval drama: constructions, representations, and the spectrum of signification
Date
30/06/2016Author
Smith, Helen F.
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis explores the spectrum of signification of disability, impairment and
embodied difference in medieval drama. Drama is an important medium in which to
explore what the body is used to signify as it provides an extra dimension in the
physical embodiment and performance of these physical and spiritual conditions.
Despite the value of medieval drama in understanding the significations of physical
and psychological affliction, it remains a neglected area of scholarly research.
In order to understand the meaning of dramatic representations of disability
and impairment, it is necessary to explore the spectrum of signification attached to
these conditions, since they could elicit such unstable and ambivalent responses. In
this endeavour, this thesis consults medical, historical and cultural sources in
addition to play-texts and performance evidence in order to understand the
construction and representation of specific types of physical and psychological
affliction in medieval drama, and what these conditions are used to signify through
the body.
Over the four chapters of this thesis I examine the ageing body (chapter 1);
the unconverted Jewish body (chapter 2); the disease of leprosy (chapter 3); and
wounds, mutilation and dismemberment (chapter 4). The play-texts I use
deliberately draw upon a wide range of characters and personified abstractions,
from the moral and the sacred to the immoral and the profane, from biblical drama
to morality plays. These diverse conditions and identities allow an overarching
insight into their use and meanings in medieval drama. Similarly, the diverse range of
characters allows me to consider how the body is used to reflect the moral and
spiritual condition of a character through the embodied mode of dramatic
performance.
For each of my chapters, the conditions I discuss possess ambivalence in their
contrasting meanings, which binds the thesis together as a whole in acknowledging
the changing and contrasting significations of disability, impairment and embodied
difference according to the context.