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  • Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–c. 1400
  • David James Griffiths
Metzler, Irina, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–c. 1400 (Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture 5), New York, Routledge, 2010; paperback; pp. 356; R.R.P. US$39.95; ISBN 9780415582049.

Disability in Medieval Europe foregrounds itself as ‘the first book that comprehensively describes disability and physical impairment in the Middle Ages’. You open the cover, and there that sentence is, raising the reader’s expectations. It is perhaps then both understandable and a bit disappointing that so much of the book is essentially a reiteration of that claim.

Disability in Medieval Europe is an adapted thesis, and it reads as such. It is heavy with theory and academic language, as rarefied and arcane as one of the medieval theological texts it later utilizes in considering spiritual approaches to the body. The prose seems to be almost too intellectual and too steeped in linguistic turns and analysis, as if the text wishes to justify its own existence on every single page through telling you its origins rather than showing its strengths. Irina Metzler first argues at length why no other text actually provides a decent framework or background for her purposes, apparently in order to demonstrate why previous research has lacked depth or real academic purpose.

Ultimately this is disappointing. Not because much literature dealing with the historical construction of ‘disability’ or ‘inability’ is undoubtedly weak or without a solid theoretical background, but because Metzler appears to be grabbing at many different theoretical foundations and previous research, and finding flaws with each. Her own approach seems more grounded in a negation of what has gone before, and an attempt to fill this ill-defined ‘hole’, than in trying to emerge with a clear theoretical or purposeful framework of her own. When she reaches her analysis of particular texts and exemplars, [End Page 259] the language and framing are highly equivocal and deeply ensconced in theoretical norms, making the reader almost wonder why the attempt was needed in the first place.

The potential importance of this work cannot be understated: with growth in research of the experiences of a variety of disenfranchised groups (women, LGBT citizens, refugees, migrants) across our current political situation, the ways in which we have defined, treated, and engaged with notions of ‘the Other’ historically become crucial to an understanding of social contexts and the evolution of particular discourses. Sadly, this text fails to catch alight, but it does provide an important beginning for the reappraisal of the experiences of this particular marginalized group.

David James Griffiths
Canberra, A.C.T
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