The volume offers an up-to-date and nuanced study of a multi-thematic topic, expressions of which can be found abundantly in ancient Greek and Latin literature: nonverbal behaviour, i.e., vocalics, kinesics, proxemics, haptics, and chronemics. The individual chapters explore texts from Homer to the 4th century AD to discuss aspects of nonverbal behaviour and how these are linked to, reflect upon, and are informed by general cultural frameworks in ancient Greece and Rome. Material sources are also examined to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the texts.
This book offers the first systematic, up-to-date, cross-cultural, and detailed study of “semi-volitional bodily behaviour” (sneezing, spitting, coughing, burping, vomiting, defecating, etc.) in the classical world. Examining verse and prose texts, fragments, and scholia from the age of Homer to the second century AD, the central argument put forward in this volume is that semi-volitional bodily acts have the potential to betray individual or collective (ethnic/civic and cultural) identities centred on a variety of different themes. Discussions specifically focus on the following five aspects of the interplay between semi-volitional body language and identity construction: sexuality and gender; the link between sexuality and socioeconomic identity of individuals or groups; the embodied markers of civic/ethnic and cultural collectives and the contrast between “we-ness” and “otherness”; ēthos and emotions; and how dietary habits and illnesses indicate the “somo-psychosocial” identity of individuals or groups. The book offers a comprehensive understanding of representations of the human body in ancient Greece and Rome, while reopening the complex and fascinating discussion about the relationship between intention, mind, body, and identity. This book offers a fascinating study suitable for students and scholars of classics and ancient Greek and Roman history. It is also of interest to those in a variety of other disciplines, including body culture studies, gender and sexuality studies, and performance studies, as well as sociology, anthropology, cognitive medicine, and the history of medicine.
A boldly innovative study of nonverbal communication in the poetry and prose of Hellenic antiquity When a Gesture Was Expected encourages a deeper appreciation of ancient Greek poetry and prose by showing where a nod of the head or a wave of the hand can complete meaning in epic poetry and in tragedy, comedy, oratory, and in works of history and philosophy. All these works anticipated performing readers, and, as a result, they included prompts, places where a gesture could complete a sentence or amplify or comment on the written words. In this radical and highly accessible book, Alan Boegehold urges all readers to supplement the traditional avenues of classical philology with an awareness of the uses of nonverbal communication in Hellenic antiquity. This additional resource helps to explain some persistently confusing syntaxes and to make translations more accurate. It also imparts a living breath to these immortal texts. Where part of a work appears to be missing, or the syntax is irregular, or the words seem contradictory or perverse—without evidence of copyists' errors or physical damage—an ancient author may have been assuming that a performing reader would make the necessary clarifying gesture. Boegehold offers analyses of many such instances in selected passages ranging from Homer to Aeschylus to Plato. He also presents a review of sources of information about such gestures in antiquity as well as thirty illustrations, some documenting millennia-long continuities in nonverbal communication.
A distinguished cast of scholars discusses models of gesture and non-verbal communication as they apply to Greek and Roman culture, literature and art. Topics include dress and costume in the Homeric poems; the importance of looking, eye-contact, and face-to-face orientation in Greek society; the construction of facial expression in Greek and Roman epic; the significance of gesture and body language in the visual meaning of ancient sculpture; the evidence for gesture and performance style in the texts of ancient drama; the erotic significance of feet and footprints; and the role of gesture in Roman law. The volume seeks to apply a sense of history as well as of theory in interpreting non-verbal communication. It looks both at the cross-cultural and at the culturally specific in its treatment of this important but long-neglected aspect of Classical Studies.
This study constitutes the first comprehensive examination of rabbinic body language represented in Palestinian rabbinic sources of late antiquity. Catherine Hezser examines rabbis’ appearance and demeanor, spatial movement, gestures, and facial expressions on the basis of literary and social-anthropological methods and theories. She discusses the various forms of rabbis’ non-verbal communication in the context of Graeco-Roman and ancient Christian literary sources and in connection with the material culture of Roman and early Byzantine Palestine. Catherine Hezser convincingly shows that in rabbinic literature body language serves as an important means of rabbis’ self-fashioning. Rabbinic texts create the image of a particularly Jewish type of intellectual who functioned and competed for adherents within the highly visual and body-conscious environment of late antiquity.
This volume on nonverbal communication studies, the most multi- and interdisciplinary contribution to this field in almost twenty years, offers numerous suggestions for further research in many hitherto unexplored areas. The twenty contributions include the most recent theoretical and empirical crosscultural studies of gestures from historical, communicative and sociopsychological perspectives. In addition the volume presents novel psychological and clinical studies of nonverbal behaviors in connection with, for instance, aphasias and children's experience of artificial limbs. A whole section is devoted to nonverbal communication in literature and literary translation, and a discussion of art and literature, which opens new avenues for literary analysis and a better understanding of reading as a recreational experience. A unique feature is a discussion of Nonverbal Communication Studies as an academic area (including detailed outlines of three current courses), complemented by an extensive bibliography.
This volume on nonverbal communication studies, the most multi- and interdisciplinary contribution to this field in almost twenty years, offers numerous suggestions for further research in many hitherto unexplored areas. The twenty contributions include the most recent theoretical and empirical crosscultural studies of gestures from historical, communicative and sociopsychological perspectives. In addition the volume presents novel psychological and clinical studies of nonverbal behaviors in connection with, for instance, aphasias and children's experience of artificial limbs. A whole section is devoted to nonverbal communication in literature and literary translation, and a discussion of art and literature, which opens new avenues for literary analysis and a better understanding of reading as a recreational experience. A unique feature is a discussion of Nonverbal Communication Studies as an academic area (including detailed outlines of three current courses), complemented by an extensive bibliography.
This is the first book, within the interdisciplinary field of Nonverbal Communication Studies, dealing with the specific tasks and problems involved in the translation of literary works as well as film and television texts, and in the live experience of simultaneous and consecutive interpretation. The theoretical and methodological ideas and models it contains should merit the interest not only of students of literature, professional translators and translatologists, interpreters, and those engaged in film and television dubbing, but also to literary readers, film and theatergoers, linguists and psycholinguists, semioticians, communicologists, and crosscultural anthropologists. Its sixteen contributions by translation scholars and professional interpreters from fifteen countries, deal with discourse in translation, intercultural problems, narrative literature, theater, poetry, interpretation, and film and television dubbing.
"Kinesis: The Ancient Depiction of Gesture, Motion, and Emotion"analyzes the depiction of emotions, gestures, and nonverbal behaviors in ancient Greek and Roman texts, and considers the precise language depicting them. Individual contributors examine genres ranging from historiography and epic to tragedy, philosophy, and vase decoration. They explore evidence as disparate as Pliny s depiction of animal emotions, Plato s presentation of Aristophanes hiccups, and Thucydides use of verb tenses. Sophocles deployment of silence is considered, as are Lucan s depiction of death and the speaking objects of the medieval Alexander Romance. Ancient authors depictions of emotion, gesture, and nonverbal behavior are intrinsically relevant to psychological, social, and anthropological studies of the ancient world, and are perhaps even more important to those who study the texts themselves and try to understand them. The volume will be relevant to scholars studying Greek and Roman society and literature, as well as to those who study the imitation of ancient literature in later societies. Since jargon is avoided and all passages in ancient languages are translated, the volume will be suitable for students from the upper undergraduate level. Contributors in addition to the volume editors include Jeffrey Rusten, Rosaria Vignolo Munson, Hans-Peter Stahl, Carolyn Dewald, Rachel Kitzinger, Deborah Boedeker, Daniel P. Tompkins, John Marincola, Carolin Hahnemann, Ellen Finkelpearl, Hanna M. Roisman, Eliot Wirshbo, James V. Morrison, Bruce Heiden, Daniel B. Levine, and Brad L. Cook."
