The Blind in French Society from the Middle Ages to the Century of Louis Braille

Zina Weygand, Emily-Jane Cohen

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780804757683
• eBook ISBN: 9780804772389
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Französische Geschichte

The integration of the blind into society has always meant taking on prejudices and inaccurate representations. Weygand's highly accessible anthropological and cultural history introduces us to both real and imaginary figures from the past, uncovering French attitudes towards the blind from the Middle Ages through the first half of the nineteenth century. Much of the book, however, centers on the eighteenth century, the enlightened age of Diderot's emblematic blind man and of the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, founded by Valentin Haüy, the great benefactor of blind people.

Weygand paints a moving picture of the blind admitted to the institutions created for them and of the conditions under which they lived, from the officially-sanctioned beggars of the medieval Quinze-Vingts to the cloth makers of the Institute for Blind Workers. She has also uncovered their fictional counterparts in an impressive array of poems, plays, and novels.The book concludes with Braille, whose invention of writing with raised dots gave blind people around the world definitive access to silent reading and to written communication.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I - FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE CLASSICAL AGE: A PARADOXICAL VISION OF BLINDNESS AND THE BLIND
• PART II - THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: A DIFFERENT LOOK AT THE BLIND
• PART III - THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE BLIND: AN AFFAIR OF STATE
• PART IV - BLINDNESS IN FRANCE IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY: REALITIES AND FICTIONS
• PART V - BLINDNESS IN THE CENTURY OF LOUIS BRAILLE: FROM PRODUCTIVIST UTOPIA TO CULTURAL INTEGRATION
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography