Dissertation Defenses

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

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Candidate: Brent Walter Cline

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: English

Title: Tongueless: Representation of the Mentally Disabled and the Novel

Committee:
Dr. Nic Witschi, Chair
Dr. Jil Larson
Dr. Christopher Nagle
Dr. Justin Jackson

Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
2033 Brown Hall

Abstract:
This study examines the representation of the mentally disabled in the novel for two related outcomes. The first is to prove that the representation of the mentally disabled is not merely a subset of the representation of the disabled in general. This is intended less as a political statement as it is a literary one. Acknowledging and building off the work of writers in disability studies such as David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder, and Tobin Siebers who concentrate on the body of the disabled, this study nevertheless shows that attempts to represent the mentally disabled are fundamentally different than those who are physically disabled. This uniqueness and complexity of representing the mentally disabled in literature leads to the second outcome of discussing eight different novels (Melmoth the Wanderer, Moby Dick, The Idiot, The Secret Agent, The Sound and the Fury, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Apartment in Athens, and Flowers for Algernon) where mentally disabled characters are revealed to be vital to the discourse of each respective narrative. This use of mentally disabled characters reflects not only historical patterns in representation, but more importantly shows that the question of the mentally disabled in literature is the question of the structure of each respective novel’s discourse. At stake in this study is not so much a “cultural representation” of mental disability as it is a structural representation of mental disability in the narrative.