Disability Health and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body

<p>This book considers early modern and postmodern ideals of health, vigor, ability, beauty, well-being, and happiness, uncovering and historicizing the complex negotiations among physical embodiment, emotional response, and communally-sanctioned behavior in Shakespeare's literary and material world. The volume visits a series of questions about the history of the body and how early modern cultures understand physical ability or vigor, emotional competence or satisfaction, and joy or self-fulfillment. Individual essays investigate the purported disabilities of the "crook-back" King Richard III or the "corpulent" Falstaff, the conflicts between different health-care belief-systems in <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> and <i>Hamlet</i>, the power of figurative language to delineate or even instigate puberty in the <i>Sonnets</i> or <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, and the ways in which the powerful or moneyed mediate the access of the poor and injured to cure or even to care. Integrating insights from Disability Studies, Health Studies, and Happiness Studies, this book develops both a detailed literary-historical analysis and a provocative cultural argument about the emphasis we place on popular notions of fitness and contentment today.</p> <p>1. Introduction: Shakespeare’s "Discourse of Disability" <i>Sujata Iyengar</i> <b>PART I: Nation</b> 2. Teeth Before Eyes: Impairment and Invisibility in Shakespeare’s <i>Richard III</i> <i>Allison P. Hobgood</i> 3. A "Grievous Burden": <i>Richard III</i> and the Legacy of Monstrous Birth <i>Geoffrey A. Johns</i> 4. Obsession/Rationality/Agency: Autistic Shakespeare <i>Sonya Freeman Loftis and Lisa Ulevich</i> 5. Seeing Feelingly: Sight and Service in <i>King Lear</i> <i>Amrita Dhar</i> 6. "Strange virtue": Staging Acts of Cure <i>Katherine Schaap Williams</i> 7. Shakespeare and Civic Health <i>Matt Kozusko </i> <b>PART II: Sex</b> 8. "The King’s Part": James I, The Lake-Ros Affair, and the Play of Purgation <i>Hillary M. Nunn</i> 9. "Gambol Faculties" and "Halting Bravery": Falstaff, Will Kemp, and Impaired Masculinity <i>Catherine E. Doubler </i> 10. Flower Imagery and Botanical Illustration: Health and Sexual Generation in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> <i>Darlena Ciraulo</i> 11. Shakespeare’s Embodied Ontology of Gender, Air, and Health <i>Sujata Iyengar</i> <b>PART III: Emotion</b> 12. Speaking Medicine: A Paracelsian Parody of the Humors in <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> <i>Nathanial B. Smith</i> 13. Catching the Plague: Love, Happiness, Health and Disease in Shakespeare <i>Ian Frederick Moulton </i> 14. Breastfeeding, Grief, and the Fluid Economy of Healthy Children in Shakespeare’s Plays <i>Ariane M. Balizet</i> 15. The Worm and the Flesh: Cankered Bodies in Shakespeare’s Sonnets <i>Alanna Skuse</i> 16. Afterword: Ten Times Happier <i>Katharine A. Craik</i></p>