Abstract
Abstract
This chapter argues that a survey of disability and the post-1940 US novel must go beyond a catalogue of disabled characters to recognize the ways that disability invites experimentation with literary forms and calls into question deeply entrenched assumptions about normalcy, ability, and personhood that have long structured the novel as a genre. It is a fundamental paradox of modernity that disabled bodies provide a rich source of aesthetic inspiration while simultaneously being shunned, reviled, and disqualified from participation in the social world. Since the mid-twentieth century, however, the representation of disabled forms has been increasingly tied to an awareness of, and a desire to challenge or reconfigure, what we know about the lived realities of disability. Critical disability studies has evolved from a concern with the thematics of disability to a set of reading methods that situate bodies in relation to environment, language, and aesthetics.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
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