ABSTRACT
New more historicized readings of trauma, as championed by Michelle Baelev, also make the time right for borrowing from the language and approach in coming to terms with the meaning and value of the texts we teach. For “teachability” in trauma studies requires understanding just how stories are “transmitted” and accepting the vulnerabilities they, often belatedly, expose. Trauma studies are not new to literary criticism. Its advent is contemporaneous with the rise of new historicism, both approaches taking hold in the early to mid-1990s. Important scholarship in trauma studies outside the time frame has emerged, with literary periods where an iconic rupture has been recognized proving most receptive to this approach. The richness and scope of literary trauma studies makes the absence of any substantial work on trauma in the long eighteenth century the more striking. The chapter discusses the important role that disability studies plays in creating a space for trauma studies in eighteenth-century criticism and pedagogy.
