Title: Extraordinary bodies
First published: 1997
Description: As the first major critical study to examine literary and cultural representations of physical disability, Extraordinary Bodies situates disability as a social construction, shifting it from a property of bodies to a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do.

Rosemarie Garland Thomson examines disabled figures in sentimental novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and the popular cultural ritual of the freak show.

Extraordinary Bodies inaugurates a new field of disability studies in the humanities by framing disability as a minority discourse, rather than a medical one, ultimately revising oppressive narratives of disability and revealing liberatory ones.
Subjects: American fiction, Body, Human, Body, Human, in literature, Feminism and literature, History, History and criticism, Human Body, People with disabilities, People with disabilities in literature, Popular culture, Sideshows, Social aspects, Social aspects of the Human body, Social conditions, Women in literature, American fiction, history and criticism, 19th century, American fiction, history and criticism, 20th century, Human body in literature, Popular culture, united states, Human body, social aspects, Literature and society
Places: United States
Time periods: 19th century, 20th century
LC classification: PS374.P44 T49 1997