Fools and Idiots?: Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages (Disability History)

Irina Metzler

ISBN 10: 0719096375 / ISBN 13: 9780719096372

Published by Manchester University Press 2018-04-01, 2018

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 6666-NBN-9780719096372

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Fools and Idiots?: Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages (Disability History)
• Publisher: Manchester University Press 2018-04-01
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719096375
• ISBN 13: 9780719096372
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This is the first book devoted to the cultural history in the pre-modern period of people we now describe as having learning disabilities. Using an interdisciplinary approach, including historical semantics, medicine, natural philosophy and law, it considers a neglected field of social and medical history and makes an original contribution to the problem of a shifting concept such as 'idiocy'. Medieval physicians, lawyers and the schoolmen of the emerging universities wrote the texts which shaped medieval definitions of intellectual ability and its counterpart, disability. In studying such texts, which form part of our contemporary scientific and cultural heritage, we gain a better understanding of which people were considered to be intellectually disabled and how their participation and inclusion in society differed from the situation today.

About the Author

Irina Metzler is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History at Swansea University