Stigma and Disfigurement: Putting on a Brave Face?

Abstract

The flipside to honor in medieval culture was shame. This introduces the theoretical framework explored in this chapter, the idea of disfigurement as stigma. Elaborated upon in detail by Erving Goffman in the 1960s, and influential on generations of sociologists and historians since, stigma is a powerful analytical concept with which to explore medieval disfigurement. As Goffman points out, a stigmatizing condition could be visible or invisible, the product of a person’s own actions or inflicted upon her or him by the wider social group. Different categories of stigma have been proposed by subsequent studies, and these are used to investigate a range of medieval texts, illustrating the contingency of reports of disfigurement and the need to situate them within specific contexts.