Traces the concept of idiocy as it has developed in fiction and film in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing particularly on visual images, and argues that writers as diverse as Gustave Flaubert, Conrad, Steinbeck and Mistry, and filmmakers such as Kurosawa, Herzog and Huston have all been attracted to idiot figures.
'... an important work theoretically and in terms of cultural self-reflection. Halliwell's impressive and interesting treatment of idiocy in fiction and film draws connections among different authors and directors to evaluate the often paradoxical representations of the idiot in various cultures, artistic genres, and time periods.' Sheila Kunkle, Professor of Social Sciences, Vermont College of the Union Institute and University 'Evicted, marginalized and forgotten by mainstream considerations and classifications, the figure of idiocy introduces subtle subversions in our relation to knowledge. The dilemma posed by the debilitated subject involves national identity, masochism, and sexual politics, as well as the relation of poetic utterance to the stammer in which it originates. Dr. Halliwell's work offers a distinguished lexicon of the visual text by which to probe the crucial limits of cognition, the areas of our shared being where language fails and falters.' Avital Ronell, Chair, Department of German, and Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature, New York University 'Martin Halliwell's engaging study of the idiot in literature and film moves with great assurance from the enlightenment "wild child" and the innocent romantic idiot to the ambiguous postmodern "spazzing" of Lars von Trier; from Conrad and Hitchcock to Dostoevsky and Kurosawa. Attentive to the varying historical and discursive contexts inhabited by the figure of the idiot, the book offers in particular, a suggestive account of the role of the linguistic outsider in twentieth-century cinema and culture.' Timothy Armstrong, Reader in Modern English and American Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London 'Halliwell's attention context is exemplary, showing how the 'cultural representation of idiocy' has reflected intellectual fashions and medical developments from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, and from R.D. Laing to Oliver Sacks.' TLS 'Martin Halliwell's new book is a note
