Beholding Disability in Renaissance England. By Allison P. Hobgood

Abstract

Nearly a decade ago, Allison P. Hobgood co-edited the field-defining Recovering Disability in Early Modern England (2013) with David Houston Wood. It has taken the better part of that decade for early modern disability studies to begin to define itself fully, culminating in an exciting proliferation of publications in just the last few years. Beholding Disability in Renaissance England is among that cohort. In many ways, Hobgood’s monograph testifies to how the study of disability in early modernity has taken shape since she and Wood rallied scholars to form what they called “ethical staring encounters” with disability histories and representations (Recovering Disability, 2). In this new volume, she models this “staring differently” as an account of how the field has emerged, effortlessly weaving recent scholarship focused on disability in the Renaissance with theories and concepts foundational to the broader Disability Studies milieu. Beholding Disability also probes into the future, and suggests a vital turn of sorts toward “disability gain,” the book’s core and driving principle that people with disabilities “have both intrinsic and extrinsic worth” (1). Ultimately, Hobgood succeeds by mining poetry and drama of the English Renaissance, tracing disability gain in some of the most unlikely places.