The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille / Zina Weygand ; translated by Emily-Jane Cohen.

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2009.

xiii, 403 pages ; 24 cm

Translation of: Vivre sans voir. 2003.

pt. 1. From the Middle Ages to the Classical Age : a paradoxical vision of blindness and the blind. The Middle Ages -- The beginning of modern times -- Groundwork for a history of blindness in the Classical Age -- pt. 2. The eighteenth century : another way of looking at the blind. Sensationalism and sensorial impairments -- Philanthropy and the education of the sensorially impaired -- The move of the Quinze-Vingts and the annuity from the public treasury -- pt. 3. The French Revolution and the blind : an affair of state. The establishment of the Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind (1791-1794) -- The National Institute for Blind Workers -- The merging of the National Institute for Blind Workers and the Hospice of the Quinze-Vingts -- pt. 4. Blindness in France in the early nineteenth century : realities and fictions. The blind in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century -- Social representations and literary figures of blindness in the first third of the nineteenth century -- pt. 5. Blindness in the century of Louis Braille : from productivist utopia to cultural integration. The Quinze-Vingts under the Consulate and the Empire : implementing a productivist utopia -- The Quinze-Vingts under the Restoration : a "memory site" of the ultra-royalist reaction -- The Royal Institute for Blind Youth under the Restoration.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [392]-403).