Imagine a world without sight. Is it dark and gloomy? Is it terrifying and isolating? Or is it simply a state of not seeing, which we have demonised and sentimentalized over the centuries? And why is blindness so frightening?
In this fascinating historical adventure, Broadcaster and author Selina Mills takes us on a journey through the history of blindness in Western Culture to discover that blindness is not so dark after all.
Inspired by her own experience of losing her sight as she forged a successful journalistic career, Life Unseen takes us through a personal and unsentimental historical quest through the lives, stories and achievements of blind people – as well as those sighted people who sought to patronize, demonize and fix them. From the blind poet Homer, through the myths and moralising of early medieval culture to the scientific and medical discoveries of the Enlightenment and modern times, the story of blindness turns out to be a story of our whole culture.
Author(s): Selina Mills
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 286
City: London
Cover
Praise page
Halftitle page
Copyright page
Dedication
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Prologue
1 Imagining it – Nandy and mythic heroes
2 Living with it – Dark versus light
3 Faking it – False eyes, false sight, and the Devil
4 Fixing it – The lure of the cure
5 Learning it – Education, education, education
6 Reading it – Pure fiction
7 Inventing it – The advantages of blindness (and disadvantages of tech)
Conclusion – What is blindness anyway?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
