Autism and Literature

Summary
This entry outlines the history and progress of literatures relating to autism. Part I: Autism, Narrative and Agency introduces various hypotheses from psychiatric literature regarding autism, language and literacy, critiquing how these are both limited and limiting. Part II: Kanner, Asperger and a Note on terminology distinguishes the contrasting but often complementary definitions of autism as influentially conceptualized by Leo Kanner (1943) and Hans Asperger (1944), and addressing the troubling background of the latter’s research in Nazi-occupied Vienna. Part III: Transforming a Triad of Tropes: Theories of Mind, STEM, and Gender introduces the origins and problems of three dominant psychiatric theories of what constitutes autism, and how these relate to literature and its study. Part IV: Autism Replies: Life Writings appraises how autistic authors have helped to transform understandings of autism. Part V: The ‘New Classic Autism’: Restrictive Literary Tropes c.2003-13 examines how popular science and popular literature converged to establish restrictive stereotypes of autistic people as a high-function white male mathematicians and scientists. Part VI: Progressive Fictions 2002-2017: The Question of Autism details how lesser-known novels, especially those by women authors, began to critically articulate vital questions on how autism is conceptualized and experienced, focusing on novels by Pat Barker, Clare Morrall and L. W. Bonneville. Part VII: Reading the Double Empathy Problem in Fiction introduces the pioneering work of autistic sociologist Dr Damien Milton, demonstrating how his model of the ‘Double Empathy Problem’ may operate as a literary critical technique, using two novels by David Lodge as examples. Part VIII: Across the Lines: Autism and Poetry discusses poetry as a neurological and physical experience, with particular reference to works by Les Murray and Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay. Part IX: The Autistic Canon: Retrospective Diagnosis and Re-membering details how, from outside and later, inside of the autistic community, authors have retrospectively identified autism in historical literary lives and fictional characters; the section also demonstrates the value of ‘re-membering’ as a literary practice in relation to autism. Part X: A First Full Cycle: Autism Representation to Autism Presentation concludes the entry by comparing four novels from a newly emerging phase in autism literature through emphasis on intersectionality and diversity, looking at how autistic women authors especially are finding and showing radical new ways to write autism.

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