Includes bibliographical references (pages [307]-316) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Seeing & Not-Seeing -- Homer's Blind Bard -- The Tenacious Grip of the Blind Seer -- I Once Was Blind but Now I See -- Out, Vile Jelly! -- Telescopes, Microscopes, Spectacles, and Speculations -- Darkness Visible -- The Molyneux Man -- Performing Enlightenment -- Braille and His Invention -- The Tap Tapping of Blind Travelers -- Helen Keller In Vaudeville and In Love -- Sanctified by Affliction, or Not -- Portrait of the (Working) Writer as Blind -- The Secret Life of Art and Accessibility -- The Scylla and Charybdis of Stigma and Superpowers -- The Invisible Gorilla and Other Inattentions -- Constructing Blind Pride Out of Ancient and Evolutionary Blind Memes.
Summary:
A probing, witty, and deeply insightful history of blindness -- in Western culture and literature, and in the author's own experience -- that ranges from Homer to Milton to Braille to Stevie Wonder. M. Leona Godin begins her fascinating, wide-ranging study with an exploration of how the idea of sight is inextricably linked with knowledge and understanding; how "blindness" has, for millennia, been used as a metaphor for ignorance; and how, in metaphorical terms, blindness can also be made to suggest a door to artistic or spiritual transcendence. And she makes clear how all of this has obscured the reality of blindness, as a consequence of which many blind people have to deal not just with their disability but also with expectations of "specialness." Godin illuminates the often surprising history of both the physiological condition and of the ideas that have attached to it. She incorporates analysis of blindness in art and literature (from King Lear to Star Wars) and in culture (assumptions of the blind as pure and magically wise) with the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, seeing eye dogs, eBooks), and with her own experience of gradually losing sight over the course of three decades. Altogether, she gives us a revelation of the centrality of blindness and vision to humanity's understanding of itself and the world-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.