Blindness and writing : from Wordsworth to Gissing / Heather Tilley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tilley, Heather, 1981- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 109.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 109

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Blind authors.

Blind--Books and reading.

Blind.

People with visual disabilities--Books and reading.

People with visual disabilities.

Blindness in literature.

Blind in literature.

People with visual disabilities and the arts.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 275 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

In this innovative and important study, Heather Tilley examines the huge shifts that took place in the experience and conceptualisation of blindness during the nineteenth century, and demonstrates how new writing technologies for blind people had transformative effects on literary culture. Considering the ways in which visually-impaired people used textual means to shape their own identities, the book argues that blindness was also a significant trope through which writers reflected on the act of crafting literary form. Supported by an illuminating range of archival material (including unpublished letters from Wordsworth's circle, early ophthalmologic texts, embossed books, and autobiographies) this is a rich account of blind people's experience, and reveals the close, and often surprising personal engagement that canonical writers had with visual impairment. Drawing on the insights of disability studies and cultural phenomenology, Tilley highlights the importance of attending to embodied experience in the production and consumption of texts.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 24 Oct 2017).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-30270-X

1-108-30280-7

1-108-15186-8