Fools and idiots? : intellectual disability in the Middle Ages / Irina Metzler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Metzler, Irina, 1966- author.

Series:

Disability history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

People with mental disabilities--History--To 1500.

People with mental disabilities.

Developmental disabilities--History--To 1500.

Developmental disabilities.

Middle Ages.

Intellectual disability--History--To 1500.

Intellectual disability.

Social history--Medieval, 500-1500.

Social history.

Social history--Medieval.

Intellectual Disability--history.

History.

Medical Subjects:

Intellectual Disability--history.

Physical Description:

246 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester, UK : Manchester University Press, 2016.

Summary:

This is the first book devoted to the cultural history in the pre-modern period of people we now describe as having learning disabilities. Using an interdisciplinary approach, including historical semantics, medicine, natural philosophy and law, Irina Metzler considers a neglected held of social and medical history and makes an original contribution to the problem of a shifting concept such as 'idiocy' Emphasising the issues with imposing modern definitions of what has variously been called cognitive, intellectual or mental disability onto the past, this book analyses a wide range of medieval and modern material. In order to explore how the names and words used to describe people also influenced their social and cultural treatment, this book looks at what the medieval equivalents to our modern scientific or psychiatric experts had to say about intellectual disability, and by uncovering how medieval normative texts shaped ideas of idiocy and folly this study reconstructs what the legal and social implications of such concepts were. The book demolishes a number of historiographic myths and stereotypes surrounding intellectual disability in the Middle Ages and suggests new insights with regard to 'fools', jesters and 'idiots'. Fools and idiots? Intellectual disability in the Middle Ages will be required reading for anyone studying or working in disability studies, history of medicine, social history and the history of ideas. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Pre-/conceptions: problems of definition and historiography 1

2 From mono to fool: semantics of intellectual disability 31

3 Cold complexions and moist humors: natural science and intellectual disability 53

4 The infantile and the irrational: mind, soul and intellectual disability 96

5 Non-consenting adults: laws and intellectual disability 140

6 Fools, pets and entertainers: socio-cultural considerations of intellectual disability 184

7 Reconsiderations: rationality, intelligence and human status 221.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0719096367

9780719096365

OCLC:

920730481