| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11401/78895 | |
| dcterms.abstract | There is a significant absence of critical work examining the portrayal of disability in the English
Renaissance unless it relates to examining disability as a metaphor. In this paper, I seek to
evaluate the portrayal of blindness, and, more broadly, the impaired body in John Milton’s
dramatic poem Samson Agonistes. What I wish to evaluate is that impairment in the drama is a
natural condition which occurs to an unstable, fragile human body which equally fragile social
norms are built upon; the grey-area which Samson’s impaired body occupies makes these social
norms clear, as well as their exclusion of disabled subjects. Using Lennard Davis’s social model
of disability, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s ideas of staring, and Mitchell and Snyder’s
narrative prosthesis, I wish to show that in a drama concerned with the relationship of spectator
and spectacle, reaffirming normalcy occurs through reinforcing familiar tropes which ascribe
meanings onto the defamiliarized body. Ultimately, Milton’s drama suggests that imposing
meaning onto impairments can itself be disabling. | |
| dcterms.available | 2018-01-01 | |
| dcterms.contributor | Advisor: Robinson, Benedict | |
| dcterms.contributor | Committee members: Dunn, Patricia | |
| dcterms.creator | Johnson, Ashley Lynn | |
| dcterms.date | 2018 | |
| dcterms.dateAccepted | 2019-12-06T17:25:51Z | |
| dcterms.dateSubmitted | 2019-12-06T17:25:51Z | |
| dcterms.description | Thesis | |
| dcterms.description | Department of English | |
| dcterms.extent | 47 pages | |
| dcterms.format | application/pdf | |
| dcterms.issued | 2018-01-01 | |
| dcterms.language | en | |
| dcterms.provenance | Submitted by Jason Torre (fjason.torre@stonybrook.edu) on 2019-12-06T17:25:51Z
No. of bitstreams: 1
Johnson_grad.sunysb_0771M_13961.pdf: 386950 bytes, checksum: a7497f7275d3283c35dddb2e4ba58cee (MD5) | |
| dcterms.provenance | Made available in DSpace on 2019-12-06T17:25:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1
Johnson_grad.sunysb_0771M_13961.pdf: 386950 bytes, checksum: a7497f7275d3283c35dddb2e4ba58cee (MD5)
Previous issue date: 2018 | |
| dcterms.publisher | Stony Brook University | |
| dcterms.title | “To Such a Tender Ball as th’Eye Confin’d”: Disability and the Instability of Authority in Milton’s Samson Agonistes | |
