1st Edition
Literature and Intellectual Disability in Early Modern England Folly, Law and Medicine, 1500-1640
- Introduction: Fools, from Popular Culture to Disability Studies
Section 1: Law
2. The Legal Discourse of ‘Idiocy’ on the Stage and Page
3. ‘A fool and his money are soon parted’: the Fool and Property
4. ‘An you knew my properties somebody would ha’ me’: the Fool as a Ward
Section 2: Medicine and Physiognomy
5. Nature, Wits and Skulls: the Fool’s Head
6. Intellectual, Sensory and Physical Disability: the Fool’s Body and Face
7. Rationalising Fools’ Disability: Causes and Risk Factors
8. Epilogue: Intellectual Disability, Embodiment and Humour in Early Modern Literature
Biography
Alice Equestri is a researcher and lecturer in early modern English literature at the University of Padua. Between 2017 and 2019, she was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie researcher at the University of Sussex. She is the author of 'Armine… Thou Art a Foole and Knave': The Fools of Shakespeare’s Romances (2016) and has published on folly in early modern culture, on Shakespeare’s last plays, and on Renaissance translation.
