When a Gesture Was Expected: A Selection of Examples from Archaic and Classical Greek Literature
176
When a Gesture Was Expected: A Selection of Examples from Archaic and Classical Greek Literature
176Paperback
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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691242224 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/13/2022 |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
NOTE TO THE READER xv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xvii
Introduction 3
ONE Nonverbal Communication 12
Circumstantial Notices in Literature 12
Illustrations 16
Continuities 20
Generally Understandable 22
Mostly Greek 26
Summary 28
TWO Some Attic Red-Figure Scenes 29
The Vote on the Arms of Achilles 29
Sociabilities 32
Come Here 33
Summary 35
THREE Homer 36
Demonstrative: Homer Iliad 16.844 36
"Incomplete" Conditional Sentence 37
Aposiopesis 38
Gesture for Apodosis 39
Gesture for Protasis 45
Summary 46
FOUR Archaic Poets 48
Archilochus 48
Pindar 50
Summary 52
FIVE Tragedy 53
Aeschylus 54
Sophocles 57
Euripides 63
Summary 66
SIX Aristophanes 67
Quotation and Parody 67
Continuities: Curses! 73
Summary 77
SEVEN Orators 78
Forensic Oratory 78
Deliberative or Display Oratory 79
Alcidamas 80
Antiphon 80
Andocides 83
Lysias 85
Demosthenes 88
Lycurgus 90
The Law Code of Gortyn 91
Summary 93
EIGHT Historians 94
Herodotus 94
Thucydides 99
Xenophon 105
Summary 108
NINE Plato 110
Plato's Characters in Action 110
Summary 125
Conclusion 126
BIBLIOGRAPHY 131
ART INDEX 141
lNDEX LOCORUM 143
GENERAL INDEX 149
What People are Saying About This
By focusing on gestures, facial expressions, and other nonverbal means of communication implied in Greek literature, Alan Boegehold gives the reader new tools with which to read long-famous works. He knows Greece, the Greek people, and Greek customs and popular culture, and draws on this data bank not only to reveal new meanings but also to show that some 'corrections' made by editors and commentators in the texts are unnecessary—sometimes even wrong. There is no other book like this in the field.
— Mortimer Chambers, University of California, Los Angeles
"By focusing on gestures, facial expressions, and other nonverbal means of communication implied in Greek literature, Alan Boegehold gives the reader new tools with which to read long-famous works. He knows Greece, the Greek people, and Greek customs and popular culture, and draws on this data bank not only to reveal new meanings but also to show that some 'corrections' made by editors and commentators in the texts are unnecessary—sometimes even wrong. There is no other book like this in the field."—Mortimer Chambers, University of California, Los Angeles"When a Gesture Was Expected conveys a huge amount of learning and fascinating material. Its central thesis, that the Greeks have always accompanied their speech with a wide range of gestures and that the ancients saw these gestures as an integral part of the speech act itself, is certainly correct and needs saying."—Carolyn Dewald, University of Southern California
When a Gesture Was Expected conveys a huge amount of learning and fascinating material. Its central thesis, that the Greeks have always accompanied their speech with a wide range of gestures and that the ancients saw these gestures as an integral part of the speech act itself, is certainly correct and needs saying.
— Carolyn Dewald, University of Southern California
Recipe
"By focusing on gestures, facial expressions, and other nonverbal means of communication implied in Greek literature, Alan Boegehold gives the reader new tools with which to read long-famous works. He knows Greece, the Greek people, and Greek customs and popular culture, and draws on this data bank not only to reveal new meanings but also to show that some 'corrections' made by editors and commentators in the texts are unnecessary—sometimes even wrong. There is no other book like this in the field."—Mortimer Chambers, University of California, Los Angeles
"When a Gesture Was Expected conveys a huge amount of learning and fascinating material. Its central thesis, that the Greeks have always accompanied their speech with a wide range of gestures and that the ancients saw these gestures as an integral part of the speech act itself, is certainly correct and needs saying."—Carolyn Dewald, University of Southern California