Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability Bethan Tovey Edward Wheatley. Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. xii, 284. $70.00. The key question in this survey of medieval texts about blindness is why medieval French literature was “cruel toward and satirical about blind characters while English literature was much less so” (4). In order to formulate some answers to this question, Edward Wheatley brings together an impressive array of sources. These include a number of widely known and widely studied works, such as Langland's Piers Plowman and Froissart's Chroniques, but he nonetheless succeeds in offering readers new perspectives on these familiar texts. In reaching his conclusions [End Page 380] about the position of the blind in England and in France, Wheatley takes the reader through some fascinating customs and stories, such as the French entertainment involving blind men chasing a pig with cudgels and the horrific tales of children being deliberately blinded in order that they might be put to work as beggars. Wheatley's approach is strongly informed by modern disability theory, an area that over the past decade has come to be of increasing interest to medievalists. Like scholars such as Irina Metzler (Disability in Medieval Europe [2006]), Wheatley seeks to adapt theoretical models of disability to the medieval context. In order to do this, he posits a “ ‘religious’ model of disability” (x), which parallels the modern medical model in seeing the discourse of disability as institutionally controlled and dominated. In the medieval period, however, the controlling institution is the church rather than the medical profession. The role of organized religion in controlling the epistemological categorization of disability has of course been discussed by a number of theorists in sociology and other disciplines, and Wheatley builds on this scholarly background to make a persuasive argument for the particular centrality of religion to medieval constructions of disability. Like most modern theorists writing about disability, Wheatley examines the distinction between “disabled” and “impaired,” a distinction that is highlighted and promoted by the social model of disability. Simply put, impairment is a biological category, which refers to a difference from the physical norm, whereas disability is considered to be a social category and refers to the external barriers faced by people with impairments. However, although Wheatley affirms the utility of this distinction in the discussion of the medieval evidence, his discussion seems to use the two terms interchangeably, referring to “impaired people” and “disabled people” without any apparent rationale behind the choice of term in each case. Because of the tendency in general discourse to refer to what the social model calls “impairments” as “disabilities,” it is not surprising to find writers on the subject falling into the trap of using “disabled” in its general sense, but it is nonetheless rather confusing for the reader. Despite this, Wheatley's employment of disability theory is nuanced and considered, providing an innovative way into his material. This theoretical discussion comprises Chapter 1 of the study. The following chapters move neatly and persuasively from the general to the particular. The second chapter gives the reader an overview of the historical context of blinding, comparing the role of blinding in medieval [End Page 381] French judicial and political processes with the general absence of this kind of mutilation in medieval England. Wheatley also discusses the institutionalization of blindness through the creation of hospices, again comparing the far greater prominence of blind people in France with their apparent neglect in England. This chapter provides a solid historical foundation upon which the following textual discussions can be based. In the third chapter, Wheatley examines the common trope of the spiritual blindness of the Jews, and the way in which this association of blindness with discourses of Jewish evil and sinfulness had the concomitant effect of implying that the blind were themselves sinful and deserving of distrust and marginalization. Following this, the fourth and fifth chapters consider the humiliation of the blind through their role in comedy and their association with sexual transgression. Wheatley discusses the genres of fabliau, drama, and romance, with a particularly interesting discussion of...