Disability, Representation and the Body in Irish Writing

This groundbreaking work merges Irish literary analysis with disability theory, examining how physical difference has been historically coded into Irish identity through figures from Jonathan Swift to Oscar Wilde. Mossman constructs a new critical framework—an Irish disability studies—by demonstrating how colonial narratives often depicted Irishness itself as a form of bodily deviance. The analysis spans surprising cultural artifacts, including Swift's pornographic poetry and Wilde's deliberately unconventional clothing, treating these not as curiosities but as serious political statements about the marginalized body. This book fundamentally reconfigures how we read the Irish literary tradition through the lens of physical and cognitive difference.

What distinguishes this study is its refusal to treat disability as mere metaphor, instead showing how real and represented bodies became sites for negotiating Irish political identity under British rule. Scholars of postcolonial theory, disability studies, and Irish literature will find their understanding of canonical texts permanently altered by Mossman's provocative connections between bodily representation and national character. The work challenges readers to see how the management of "deviant" bodies has always been central to projects of nation-building and cultural resistance. This is essential reading for anyone interested in how literature encodes the politics of the human form.