Join us at an upcoming talk on Friday, March 27th at 2-3PM in PLZ 600F, as Brock English MA graduate, Daryl Wakunick speaks on “Making a Case for Cripple: Dethroning Richard III as the King of Disability in Early Modern Literature”.

This paper uses concepts from the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (corporeal schema) and critical disability studies (especially, cripple-consciousness and the contrasting medical and social models of disability) to carry out a comparison of how disability is depicted in Shakespeare’s Richard III and the anonymously written early modern city comedy, The Fair Maid of the Exchange. Though Richard III is the most studied disabled character in early modern literature, Shakespeare’s depiction of the king affirms harmful stereotypes that plague disabled people to this day. To counter the false notions about disability in Richard III the paper turns to the
lesser-known character called Cripple from The Fair Maid of the Exchange to highlight a more productive, agentic version of disability. The goal of the paper is to decentre Richard as the pinnacle of early modern disability and present a fresh perspective of how we understand historical depictions of embodied difference.

https://brocku.ca/humanities/philosophy/research-in-progress-speaker-series/

All are welcome. Light refreshments provided.

This event is co-hosted with the Department of Philosophy