Title: Disability, Representation, and the British Military
Abstract: Literature often casts soldiers and sailors as icons of fitness, yet few return from combat physically or mentally unscathed. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature is filled with impaired and disabled figures on the stage, in poetry, and in fiction. Taking account of ways in which European Enlightenment attitudes shaped conceptions of the body and human identity, this talk will trace representations of the British military through the lens of Critical Disability Studies. From Rochester to Austen, the myriad textual instantiations of deformity, illness, debility, and disability featured in eighteenth-century British literature shaped and reflected the experiences of disabled combatants in an era of global warfare. Marking the many military conflicts and the colonizing projects of Britain’s expanding empire in India, Africa, and the Americas, British writers marshaled the figure of the soldier again and again, using tropes of disability to interrogate British foreign and domestic policy, the Atlantic slave trade, class hierarchy, rural depopulation, and advancements in science, medicine, and industry. Viewing literary representations of the military from the perspective of disability, this talk will explore how images of British soldiers, sailors, and veterans shifted attitudes regarding health, technology, gender, race, patriotism, nationalism, and radicalism under the shadow of endless war and colonial exploitation.
