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The Style of Gestures

Embodiment and Cognition in Literary Narrative

Guillemette Bolens
foreword by Alain Berthoz

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In this volume Guillemette Bolens examines the ways in which artists, authors, and readers draw on skills, sensorimotor capacities, and embodied knowledge when creating and experiencing artistic and literary works. In so doing, Bolens offers a new literary perspective on gesture studies and the role of embodied cognition in narrative.

At the cutting edge of interdisciplinary inquiries into gesture, style, narratology, cognition, and literature, this work brings together academic expertise in literary studies with a consideration of neuroscientific and cognitive findings. Bolens studies the...

In this volume Guillemette Bolens examines the ways in which artists, authors, and readers draw on skills, sensorimotor capacities, and embodied knowledge when creating and experiencing artistic and literary works. In so doing, Bolens offers a new literary perspective on gesture studies and the role of embodied cognition in narrative.

At the cutting edge of interdisciplinary inquiries into gesture, style, narratology, cognition, and literature, this work brings together academic expertise in literary studies with a consideration of neuroscientific and cognitive findings. Bolens studies the relevance of kinesic intelligence—our ability to understand the meaning of body movements, postures, gestures, and facial expressions—to the interpretation of literature. Through her discussions of works by John Milton, Jane Austen, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and major medieval authors, Bolens shows how our experience of creative works draws on forms of cognition that are grounded in our corporeality.

This book represents a crucial contribution from a literary scholar to the exciting new field of embodied cognition. With a foreword by well-known neuroscientist Alain Berthoz, The Style of Gestures convincingly makes the case that embodied cognition is essential to the reception, understanding, and enjoyment of art and literature.

Reviews

Reviews

This book successfully translates its analytic tools and interpretative frameworks beyond the page into the reader’s next reading experience and, perhaps, social encounter. As Bolens writes, ‘literature is powerful because, more than any other type of discourse, it triggers the activation of unpredicted sensorimotor configurations and surprises the mind with its own imaginative and cognitive possibilities.’

The Style of Gestures brings interdisciplinary research from the field of embodied cognition to medieval textual criticism, and the results are remarkable... Bolens's work demonstrates the clear advantages of embracing the shift towards embodied cognition.

This book is truly groundbreaking, an outstanding work that is highly original in both its object and methodology. At a time when literary studies need to be renewed and extended to new interdisciplinary collaborations, there is no doubt to me that this book will attract wide attention both in teaching and research.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
248
ISBN
9781421405186
Table of Contents

Foreword by Alain Berthoz
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Body in Literature
2. Kinesic Tropes and Action Verbs
3. Verecundia and Social Wounding in the Legend of Lucrece
4. Face-work and Ambiguous

Foreword by Alain Berthoz
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Body in Literature
2. Kinesic Tropes and Action Verbs
3. Verecundia and Social Wounding in the Legend of Lucrece
4. Face-work and Ambiguous Feats in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Guillemette Bolens, Ph.D.

Guillemette Bolens is a professor of English literature at the University of Geneva and author of the award-winning La Logique du corps articulaire: Les articulations du corps humain dans la littérature occidentale.
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