Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I European Peripheries
- 2 Science, Religion and Sociability in Early Eighteenth-Century Irish Thought
- 3 Visualizing Spain's Enlightenment: The Marginal Universality of Deafness
- 4 Sociability and Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-Century Venice: European Travellers and Venetian Women's Casinos
- Part II Eurasian Borders
- Part III The Atlantic World
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - Visualizing Spain's Enlightenment: The Marginal Universality of Deafness
from Part I - European Peripheries
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I European Peripheries
- 2 Science, Religion and Sociability in Early Eighteenth-Century Irish Thought
- 3 Visualizing Spain's Enlightenment: The Marginal Universality of Deafness
- 4 Sociability and Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-Century Venice: European Travellers and Venetian Women's Casinos
- Part II Eurasian Borders
- Part III The Atlantic World
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
‘Deaf mutes have a mind no less than do those who hear, and they follow the light and the direction of the mind in their ideas’.
Lorenzo Hervás y PanduroIntroduction
Deaf people in Spain during the second half of the eighteenth century occupied a curious position. Discursively, they appeared in selected late-eighteenth-century Spanish debates surrounding the nature of language, the relationship of language to thought and the potential for humanity to perfect itself using reason. The notion of visuality – in both practical and figurative terms – was conspicuously at the root of these discussions. Figuratively, and dating from the origins of deaf education in early sixteenth-century Spain, the deaf were becoming more visible as a group. A handful of educators, philosophers, linguists and scholars initiated discussions exploring both the potential education of the deaf and also what the education of this group might reveal about human language and thought more universally speaking. Yet the visible world was also an important part of the education of the deaf student in practical terms. Such instruction –although overwhelmingly geared toward the use of spoken language – itself relied on a number of visual tools, the most recognizable being the Spanish Manual Alphabet, in which letters of the spoken/written alphabet were rendered on individual hands to aid in communicating with the deaf student.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sociability and CosmopolitanismSocial Bonds on the Fringes of the Enlightenment, pp. 27 - 46Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014