Reading Victorian Deafness

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Disability, Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, British
Cover of the book Reading Victorian Deafness by Jennifer Esmail, Ohio University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Jennifer Esmail ISBN: 9780821444511
Publisher: Ohio University Press Publication: April 15, 2013
Imprint: Ohio University Press Language: English
Author: Jennifer Esmail
ISBN: 9780821444511
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Publication: April 15, 2013
Imprint: Ohio University Press
Language: English

Reading Victorian Deafness is the first book to address the crucial role that deaf people, and their unique language of signs, played in Victorian culture. Drawing on a range of works, from fiction by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, to poetry by deaf poets and life writing by deaf memoirists Harriet Martineau and John Kitto, to scientific treatises by Alexander Graham Bell and Francis Galton, Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people’s language use was a public, influential, and contentious issue in Victorian Britain.

The Victorians understood signed languages in multiple, and often contradictory, ways: they were objects of fascination and revulsion, were of scientific import and literary interest, and were considered both a unique mode of human communication and a vestige of a bestial heritage. Over the course of the nineteenth century, deaf people were increasingly stripped of their linguistic and cultural rights by a widespread pedagogical and cultural movement known as “oralism,” comprising mainly hearing educators, physicians, and parents.

Engaging with a group of human beings who used signs instead of speech challenged the Victorian understanding of humans as “the speaking animal” and the widespread understanding of “language” as a product of the voice. It is here that Reading Victorian Deafness offers substantial contributions to the fields of Victorian studies and disability studies. This book expands current scholarly conversations around orality, textuality, and sound while demonstrating how understandings of disability contributed to Victorian constructions of normalcy. Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people were used as material test subjects for the Victorian process of understanding human language and, by extension, the definition of the human.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Reading Victorian Deafness is the first book to address the crucial role that deaf people, and their unique language of signs, played in Victorian culture. Drawing on a range of works, from fiction by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, to poetry by deaf poets and life writing by deaf memoirists Harriet Martineau and John Kitto, to scientific treatises by Alexander Graham Bell and Francis Galton, Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people’s language use was a public, influential, and contentious issue in Victorian Britain.

The Victorians understood signed languages in multiple, and often contradictory, ways: they were objects of fascination and revulsion, were of scientific import and literary interest, and were considered both a unique mode of human communication and a vestige of a bestial heritage. Over the course of the nineteenth century, deaf people were increasingly stripped of their linguistic and cultural rights by a widespread pedagogical and cultural movement known as “oralism,” comprising mainly hearing educators, physicians, and parents.

Engaging with a group of human beings who used signs instead of speech challenged the Victorian understanding of humans as “the speaking animal” and the widespread understanding of “language” as a product of the voice. It is here that Reading Victorian Deafness offers substantial contributions to the fields of Victorian studies and disability studies. This book expands current scholarly conversations around orality, textuality, and sound while demonstrating how understandings of disability contributed to Victorian constructions of normalcy. Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people were used as material test subjects for the Victorian process of understanding human language and, by extension, the definition of the human.

More books from Ohio University Press

Cover of the book Making Modern Girls by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book The Ohio State University in the Sixties by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Cartography and the Political Imagination by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Dickens's Forensic Realism by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book The Quick-Change Artist by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Gone Dollywood by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Children in Slavery through the Ages by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Advances in the Analysis of Spanish Exclamatives by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Modernism and the Women’s Popular Romance in Britain, 1885–1925 by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Market Encounters by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Taken In Faith by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1905–1963 by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book From Jail to Jail by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Mountains of Injustice by Jennifer Esmail
Cover of the book Stirring the Pot by Jennifer Esmail
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy