“Madmen and fools": mental illness and disability in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling

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Date
2020
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University of Alabama Libraries
Abstract

Criticism of The Changeling, while abundant, has historically either neglected the madhouse subplot or treated it as a symbolic reflection of the main plot. While some scholars have examined the historical context of the “Bedlam” scenes, this paper will focus on the text itself, bringing the play, its historical context, and modern-day disability theory into dialogue. A close examination of the subplot’s text reveals a fluidity between the categories of “mad” or “foolish” and “sane.” This fluidity seems to align with historical attitudes toward mental illness, which would have constructed mental illness as a temporary affliction from which the sufferer could recover. The play also prefigures modern disability theories which seek to universalize disability and destabilize it as an identity category. However, the fluidity present in the text contrasts with a sense of distinct boundaries between the madhouse inmates and the “normal” characters, a distinction which was also present during the time period in which the play was written. To resolve this apparent contradiction, I turn to the theory of narrative prosthesis, using it to illustrate the way in which such fluid, universalizing models of disability can be used to re-marginalize the disabled in the play, in critical theory, and in life. Thus, I argue for a balance between the normalization of disability and an understanding of the disabled as uniquely marginalized individuals.

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Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
Keywords
English literature, Literature, Disability studies
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