Women and Disability in Medieval Literature

Author / Editor
Pearman, Tory Vandeventer.

Title
Women and Disability in Medieval Literature

Published
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Physical Description
xiv, 206 pp.

Series
The New Middle Ages.

Description
Theorizes how medieval medical and social discourses link the "categories of 'woman' and 'disabled,'" a linking anchored in the notion that women are defective men. Compares the notion of reproduction in MerT and "Dame Sirith"; punishment of women in WBP and Geoffrey de la Tour-Landry's "Book of the Knight"; enchantment and punishment in "Bisclavret," "Sir Launfal," and Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid"; and motherhood and disability in the "Book of Margery Kempe."

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Merchant and His Tale