The term 'idiot' is a damning put down, whether deployed on the playground or in the board room. People stigmatized as being 'intellectually disabled' today must confront variants of the fear and pity with which society has greeted them for centuries. In this ground-breaking new study Patrick McDonagh explores how artistic, scientific and sociological interpretations of idiocy work symbolically and ideologically in society. Drawing upon a broad spectrum of British, French and American resources including literary works (Wordsworth's 'The Idiot Boy', Dickens Barnaby Rudge, Conrad's The Secret...

This collection explores the historical origins of our modern concepts of intellectual or learning disability. The essays, from some of the leading historians of ideas of intellectual disability, focus on British and European material from the Middle Ages to the late-nineteenth century and extend across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical and psychiatric histories. They investigate how precursor concepts and discourses were shaped by and interacted with their particular social, cultural and intellectual environments, eventually giving rise to contemporary ideas. The...