Focused Annotated Bibliography

Harold C. Goddard, Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 2
Scholarly monograph, ebook found through library, a little over fifty years old
As can be inferred from the date on this scholarship, Goddard takes an old school approach to analyzing the blindness in King Lear. Despite the difference in approach though, I think he comes to some good conclusions that should be talked about.

Georgina Kleege, Sight Unseen
Scholarly monograph, found in physical library, between ten and fifty years old
This book has been my go-to source for literary stereotypes of the blind, and it really helped me dive into the field of disability studies. Though Kleege is legally blind, she still watches movie and takes part in visual culture, making her a valuable bridge between two worlds. Her comments are insightful if challenging, sometimes, but her book has been very helpful for reorienting my viewpoint on blindness in literature.

Kenneth Jernigan, "Is Literature Against Us?"
Speech given at National Federation of the Blind meeting (potential stakeholders), between ten and fifty years old
The article that started it all for me. Kenneth Jernigan brings this conversation about blindness in literature to a head when he claims that classic literature, including King Lear, has been doing the blind a disservice by perpetuating harmful stereotypes to mostly sighted readers. Writing that I need to address in my paper.

Sylvia Morris, "Sight and Blindness in Shakespeare"
Academic blog, very recent
Though this is much more of a traditional reading of blindness in literature, one not really informed by disability studies, it provides several interesting links to the history of sight and how it has been valued throughout the past few centuries. This could prove really interesting as a contrast to my research.


Robert B. Pierce,"'I Stumbled When I Saw: Interpreting Gloucester's Blindness in King Lear"
Academic Journal, within past ten years
Pierce takes much the same approach I do to King Lear, trying to work through the way that blindness is used in it. My work will in a way be building off his; he points to the interaction of the blind Gloucester and the mad Lear as a way of breaking away from the traditional presentation of the blind in literature, and his discussions of blind stereotypes are useful. My thesis will hopefully bring his work to a more pointed conclusion.

David Richman, "Smelling Their Way to Dover: A Blind Director's Take on Blind Gloucester"
Found through footnote in Pierce, academic journal, within past ten years
This piece is fascinating and evocative, immediately issuing a challenge to the sighted reader that the fear of blindness is restricted to the sighted. I don't agree with Richman's staging of the cliffs of Dover scene, which he wants to make as darkly humorous as possible in order to highlight the emotions the audience feels about the violent blinding of Gloucester, but I will probably be pushing back against this piece in my own work.

Hannah Thompson, "Andromaque: Audio Description in the Seventeenth Century" (or similar posts from the Blind Spot blog
Academic blog, very recent
Thompson, herself a legally blind woman, writes in this post about a French play that, like King Lear, featured extensive description of the scene, this time because people in the audience couldn't see what was happening on the small stage. It might be interesting to put this play into dialogue with the way this kind of ekphrasis is used in King Lear.

Amy Vidali, "Seeing What We Know: Disability and Theories of Metaphor"
Academic journal, within past ten years
Vidali takes a classic disability studies approach and deconstructs the metaphor we have of "seeing as knowing." She proposes ways that disability studies can deal with these deeply ingrained elements of sighted culture, and since the topic is about seeing and knowledge, this article is very pertinent to the Dover Cliffs scene, where Gloucester is supposedly fooled by the sighted Edgar.