Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World

This collection examines the intersection of the discourses of "e;disability"e; and "e;monstrosity"e; in a timely and necessary intervention in the scholarly fields of Disability Studies and Monster Studies. Analyzing Medieval and Early Modern art and literature replete with images of non-normative bodies, these essays consider the pernicious history of defining people with distinctly non-normative bodies or non-normative cognition as monsters. In many cases throughout Western history, a figure marked by what Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has termed "e;the extraordinary body"e; is labeled a "e;monster."e; This volume explores the origins of this conflation, examines the problems and possibilities inherent in it, and casts both disability and monstrosity in light of emergent, empowering discourses of posthumanism.