Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Blind in France
Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Blind in France

Author: William R. Paulson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1400858585

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Paulson examines literary, philosophical, and pedagogical writing on blindness in France from the Enlightenment, when philosophical speculation and surgical cures for cataracts demystified the difference between the blind and the sighted, to the nineteenth century, when the literary figure of the blind bard or seer linked blindness with genius, madness, and narrative art. A major theme of the book is the effect of blindness on the use of language and sign systems: the philosophes were concerned at first with understanding the doctrine of innate ideas, rather than with understanding blindness as such. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Reviewing Blindness in French Fiction, 1789–2013
Reviewing Blindness in French Fiction, 1789–2013

Author: Hannah Thompson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-08-18

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1137435119

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book argues that the most interesting depictions of blindness in French fiction are those which call into question and ultimately undermine the prevailing myths and stereotypes of blindness which dominate Western thought. Rather than seeing blindness as an affliction, a tragedy or even a fate worse than death, the authors examined in this study celebrate blindness for its own sake. For them it is a powerful artistic and creative force which offers new and surprising ways of describing, and relating to, reality. Canonical and lesser-known novels from a range of genres, including the roman noir, science fiction, auto-fiction and realism are analyzed in detail to show how the presence of blind characters invites the reader to abandon his or her traditional reliance on the sense of sight and engage with the world in sensual, and hitherto unexpected, ways. This book challenges everything we thought we knew about blindness and invites us to revel in the pleasures and perils of reading blind.

Toward an Aesthetics of Blindness
Toward an Aesthetics of Blindness

Author: David Feeney

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780820486628

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Blindness has always fascinated those who can see. Although modern imaginative portrayals of the sightless experience are increasingly positive, the affirmative elements of these renderings are inevitably tempered and problematized by the visual predilections of the artists undertaking them. This book explores a variety of the (dis)continuities between depictions of the sightless experience of beauty by sighted artists and the lived aesthetic experiences of blind people. It does so by pressing a radical interdisciplinary reinterpretation of celebrated dramatic portrayals of blindness into service as a tool with which to probe the boundaries of the capacities of the sighted imagination while exploring the sensory detriment of our visually fixated notions of beauty. Works by J. M. Synge, W. B. Yeats, and Brian Friel are explored as a means of crafting a workable and innovative medium of theoretical and experiential exchange between the disciplines of literature, aesthetics, and disability studies. In addition to appraising previously unexamined aspects of the work of three of Ireland's most celebrated modern dramatists, this book considers the consequences for blind people of the exclusionary and prohibitive elements of traditional aesthetic theory and art education. The insights yielded will be of value to those with an interest in modern literature, differential aesthetics, visual culture, perception, and the experience of blindness.

Blind and Blindness in Literature of the Romantic Period
Blind and Blindness in Literature of the Romantic Period

Author: Edward Larrissy

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2007-06-19

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0748632018

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the first full-length literary-historical study of its subject, Edward Larrissy examines the philosophical and literary background to representations of blindness and the blind in the Romantic period. In detailed studies of literary works he goes on to show how the topic is central to an understanding of British and Irish Romantic literature. While he considers the influence of Milton and the 'Ossian' poems, as well as of philosophers, including Locke, Diderot, Berkeley and Thomas Reid, much of the book is taken up with new readings of writers of the period. These include canonical authors such as Blake, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Keats and Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as less well-known writers such as Charlotte Brooke and Ann Batten Cristall. There is also a chapter on the popular genre of improving tales for children by writers such as Barbara Hofland and Mary Sherwood. Larrissy finds that, despite the nostalgia for a bardic age of inward vision, the chief emphasis in the period is on the compensations of enhanced sensitivity to music and words. This compensation becomes associated with the loss and gain involved in the modernity of a post-bardic age. Representations of blindness and the blind are found to elucidate a tension at the heart of the Romantic period, between the desire for immediacy of vision on the one hand and, on the other, the historical self-consciousness which always attends it.

Tropicopolitans
Tropicopolitans

Author: Srinivas Aravamudan

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780822323150

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Exposes new relationships between literary representation and colonialism, focusing on the metaphorizing colonialist discourse of imperial power in the tropics.

The Colour of Angels
The Colour of Angels

Author: Constance Classen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-04

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1134678193

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Colour of Angels uncovers the gender politics behind our attitude to the senses. Using a wide variety of examples, ranging from the sensuous religious visions of the middle ages through to nineteenth-century art movements, this book reveals a previously unexplored area of womens history.

Borders, Boundaries and the Bible
Borders, Boundaries and the Bible

Author: Martin O'Kane

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9781841271484

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of current biblical studies, especially the interpretation of the Bible through the arts. Its aim is to illustrate how the crossing of boundaries enriches our understanding of the text itself. Contributors include Robert Carroll, Mary Douglas, Wendy Porter, Edward Kessler, Larry Kreitzer, John Hull and Martin O'Kane. The themes embrace literature (Kipling), music (Bach) and art (Holbein). The editor contributes an introduction and an illustrated essay on the Flight into Egypt as an icon of refuge.>

The Tactile Heart
The Tactile Heart

Author: John M. Hull

Publisher: SCM Press

Published: 2014-07-28

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0334049431

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Tactile Heart is a collection of theological essays on relating blindness and faith and developing a theology of blindness that makes a constructive contribution to the wider field of disability theology. John Hull looks at key texts in the Christian tradition, such as the Bible, written as a text for sighted people, and at hymns, which often use blindness as a metaphor for ignorance and explores how these can be read by blind people.

Woman's Body, Woman's Word
Woman's Body, Woman's Word

Author: Fedwa Malti-Douglas

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0691194653

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Woman's voice and body are closely entwined in the Arabo-Islamic tradition, argues Fedwa Malti-Douglas in this pioneering book. Spanning the ninth through twentieth centuries and covering a wide range of texts—from courtly anectdote to mystical and philosophical treatises, from works of geography to autobiography—this study reveals how woman's access to literary speech has remained mediated through her body. Malti-Douglas first analyzes classical texts (both well-known works like The Thousand and One Nights and others still ignored in the West) in which the female voice, often associated with wit or trickery of a sexual nature, is subordinated to the male scriptor. Showing how early Arabo-Islamic discourse continues to influence contemporary Arabic writing, she maintains that today feminist writers of novels, short stories, and autobiography must work through this tradition, even if they subvert or reject it in the end. Whereas woman in the classical period speaks through the body, woman in the modern period often turns corporeality into a literary weapon to achieve power over discourse. Fedwa Malti-Douglas is Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas, Austin. Her books include Structures of Avarice: The Bukhala' in Medieval Arabic Literature (Leiden) and Blindness and Autobiography: Al-Ayyam of Taha Husayn (Princeton). Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.