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Un comédien sentimental (Pocket) (French Edition)

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ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics. East Dane Designer Men's Fashion. Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands. This passage shows that gestures do not necessarily spring from the motions of the heart. They can convey thoughts as well as emotions; they embody a certain form of discourse which Yorick recognizes as such; they are symbols rather than symptoms. They express thoughts and reasoning, they may be. The possibility for gestures to convey thoughts can be better understood in the context of eighteenth-century theories of language. In a world which is dominated by Locke's theories, words are described as the signs of ideas, which enables both expression and communication.

Much of eighteenth-century reflection about language is influenced by Locke, and it may be said that to offer a theory of language in that time was indeed, in one way or another, to subscribe to Locke's ideas.

Gesture in this sense can be perceived and conceived of as language, can be interpreted, can serve the purpose of communication. The text of A Sentimental Journey displays an awareness of this phenomenon and invites the reader sentimental and otherwise to think of gestures in terms of language. This parallel is indicated by the possibility of combining gestures, as one combines ideas and words. In the scene with the beautiful Grisset, Yorick mentions "certain combined looks of simple subtlety — where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended. Gestures in this sense allow not only immediate communication of sentiments without the mediation of words, but, like words, they enable a rather complex form of expression, through the possible combination of sentiments and gestures.

Gestures function both in the context of sentimental language as pure expression of sentiment and feelings or at least the theory treats them as such , and in certain other parts they operate like words and could perhaps be translated. This account is validated, in eighteenth-century terms, by the reference to the Lockean model.

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But some puzzles remain — are the two types of gestures which I have isolated, radically different or are they linked? The perception of gestures through the words of the text must also be investigated as well as the idea of translation which my analysis does not as yet justify: Debates about body language go back to Greece and Rome, where various writers established the possibility of a theoretical discourse about gestures as well as a normative and moral conception of them.

The analysis of actio rhetorica was again investigated from the sixteenth century onwards under the influence of religious debates. Analyses of gestures in the eighteenth century focus on their universality, through the idea of communication between nations, as well as through a study of the body motions of the deaf and the mute. Gestures should also be appropriate to the topic, the thought, the passion which the orator tries to convey.

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The natural movements of the soul, which are universal, must be conveyed with appropriate gestures; they must look natural, and be controlled "paroisse purement naturel" at the same time. He does not use gestures to describe words but he relates them directly to the thought that he has. In this sense, the reading that Yorick gives of the Due's posture quoted above , of "the turns and expressions of his body and limbs" , of the tone of his voice, seems to echo physiognomy as well as consciously voiced theories of rhetorical delivery:.

The power of gesture relies therefore on careful learning and practice, on codification as well, in order to convey naturalness and spontaneity. The dual characteristic of gestures that express directly the movements of the soul but which are learnt and controlled, appears even more clearly in debates about acting. Like the orator, the actor must affect the heart of the spectator with his action. Aaron Hill, in The Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing, explains that in order to achieve this supreme goal the actor must be a man of feeling.

This is enunciated in many a maxim of his book, such as: We see that gestures are not necessarily linked to feelings since they have the possibility of "express [ing] nothing. In another treatise on acting, which was adapted into English by Henry Siddons Mrs Siddons's son , Johan Jacob Engel insists that the actor should have absolute control over his motions: He shows that infinite variations convey different meanings and that the context is important for the understanding of the actor's performance.

Gestures are therefore caught in a tension between their natural relation to sentiment, their fundamental character, and the fact that they may be learnt and controlled by the actor. Going back to A Sentimental Journey. Does this discussion help our understanding of the nature of gestures and of their representation?

Of course Sterne may or may not have read the texts I mention. He was probably aware on the other hand of these discussions, through his education,26 through conversations, either in France or in England, through his friendship with Garrick — he was far from being a solitary parson or a recluse writer. In the eighteenth- century context, this is anyway what discussions about gesture were also about. Against the standard theory of sentimental language, I would like to argue that Sterne, in A Sentimental Journey, is fully aware of the. Gestures indeed, as rhetorical debates point out, imply a certain form of control on the part of the person using them.

There are also certain standard gestures, whose meaning is more or less set, and, this is what is important, are recognizable as such. It does not mean that the theory of sentimental language as direct expression of sentiment through the body is wrong — it is rather an interpretation of gestures which has historical sources in Latin rhetorics, which is voiced for specific purposes. From the beginning of A Sentimental Journey we may witness this characteristic of gestures.

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In the encounter with the Monk, for example, where Yorick adopts an attitude of determination, which is meant to be perceived as an attitude of determination:. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous ; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket — button'd it up — set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him: The succession of motions we witnessed the same phenomenon in the theatre scene points to an argumentative movement that one can perceive in body language, as well as an intention to convey meaning, to signify, which is marked by the adverb "accordingly.

Yorick seems equally aware that the meaning of gestures lies in their use. At the end of the scene with the beautiful Grisset, Yorick retires "with a lower bow than one generally makes to a shopkeeper's wife" What he does here is to use a convention and to flout it so as to convey meaning; in modern linguistic theory this is called "exploitation. The whole scene with the Grisset, in spite of its initial comments about the immediacy of sign language, and the thrill that body contact gives to Yorick, indicates humourously an awareness of the conventionality of sign language:.

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The beautiful Grisset look'd sometimes at the gloves, then side-ways to the window, then at the gloves — and then at me. I was not disposed to break silence — I follow'd her example: Gestures can be imitated "I follow'd her example" , the syntax can be copied, for gestures have no meaning, and it is left to the eyes to carry out the attack — but eyes, like the blood, are another story.

Gestures at any rate are not pure symptom, but they can be read, deciphered, they function like symbols and this is how they can convey meaning — this is also why they can be ambiguous or misinterpreted. More precisely, debates about theatricality show that gestures are not pure expression, but that they imply codes and definitions. An attitude of grief is conventional because it is precisely an attitude that can be understood as an attitude of grief.

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The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with the ass's pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time — then laid them down — look'd at them and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it; held it some time in his hand — then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle — looked wistfully at the little arrangement he had made — and then gave a sigh.

The "simplicity of his grief" which Yorick then goes on to praise, can be, I think, usefully compared to the following description of sadness:. Everything languishes in the melancholy man: This parallel relies of course on the conventions of grief, on certain habits of expression and representation. Such a parallel emphasizes the importance of traditions, of habits of perception, on the styles of representation. The mixture of humour and sympathy springs, I think, from Sterne's awareness of the power of representation. The minute attention which Engel pays to attitudes and variations in poses that are meant to indicate variations of meaning, shows that infinitesimal variations of body posture may convey differences of message.

This, I think, explains the possibility of the scene with the old officer, in that small differences in attitudes can be understood as successive moments in the conveyance of a message. The fact that the scene takes place at the theatre is no coincidence and adds I believe to the conventionality and theatricality of the scene. Part of Sterne's system of representation relies on an understanding of gestures which is based on a certain degree of theatricality; I think there are residual elements of orality which Sterne integrates in his project.

More precisely, Yorick-Sterne constructs a reader who deciphers the text of the account of a journey through France. But at the same time this reader is also a spectator who witnesses, with the mental attitudes of a spectator at a play, the movements and actions of certain characters. The narrator's translation helps him in this task. We have to remember that in an eighteenth-century context, the reader would be accustomed to perceive gestures directly; he would visualize them.

C'est la peinture des mouvements qui charme, surtout dans les romans domestiques. Je vois le personnage; soit qu'il parle, soit qu'il se taise, je le vois; et son action m'affecte plus que ses paroles. Diderot mentions Richardson in the middle of an argument about pantomime and the representation of gesture on the stage, because there is no significant difference between the gestures that are described in the text of a novel and the gestures that are or meant to be represented on the stage. I started off this paper with the apparent disjunction betwen gestures that were perceived beyond any verbal expression, and the possibility, acknowledged by the narrator, of translating gestures.

I am now beginning to see that gestures in fact may not be caught in a. The question of translation remains. In the scene at the theatre, Yorick not only transcribes for the reader the movements of the officer in the box, thereby using one mode of translation which does not, as I have shown, preclude the possibility of perceiving these body motions directly , but he adds: What is the status of this translation, what is the status of the double translation which I isolated for a title to this paper: The problem of translation is one that was often debated in rhetorics in France and in England.

This debate was concerned with the proper expression of thought, with the appropriateness of certain languages to the expression of thoughts, with the order of words. The idea was expressed in England by Addison as well as by Voltaire who claimed that English was a simpler language than French. The famous reply to Batteux is Diderot's Lettre sur les sourds et les muets, which establishes the link between gesture and translation. Diderot criticizes Batteux and, in his account which typifies eighteenth-century reflection on the problem of body language, he sees in gestures the more fundamental, the more natural form of language and investigates inversions.

According to him, gestures are the purest form of language; they can sometimes be translated but such a translation must be approximate: He considers in turn the language of the stage and that of the deaf and the mute, which enables him to show that the best rhetorical construction is the one that puts forward the main idea, and that the problem of inversions is not linked to the naturalness of languages.

The logic of debates about translation led to a questioning of the language of the body, which could be thought of as the original language. This idea, which was not expressed in classical literature, shows the growing concern for a philosophical reflection on language, linking up translatability, gestures and words.

If we go back to sentimental language in this context, we could say that the representation of feelings which Sterne investigates is different from Richardson's. It integrates elements that belong to traditional accounts of sentiment namely the blood theory, although there might be some humour in it as well , it underlines the importance of body contact, but the suggestion that translation is possible means that gesture cannot be considered as the simple expression of sentiment.

Gesture, in the middle of the eighteenth century, sends us back to a reflection on the formation of languages, through both origin and translatability. In this sense, Sterne's representation of the body is caught in a moment of constitution of body language as a linguistic system per se. This, I think, explains the original puzzle: One function of words may be to convey gestures, but at the same time the perception of gestures is necessarily a linguistic one. To insist on the notion of translation shows that gesture is not a more adequate form of expression but a language of an altogether different type, a "short hand" perhaps as Yorick would have it, that can be learnt and translated "mechanically" I would therefore like to say that communication through gestures is possible, within the context of A Sentimental Journey, in its infinite variations, not because gestures transcend words but because discussions about gestures, in the eighteenth century, were part of discussions about language in general.

What we see in Sterne's system of representation is the convergence of themes that the age was concerned with. The passage from oral to written forms of communication is quite nicely articulated in the notion of body language which moves from a conception of the "natural" to a theory of gesture as conventional. There is of course one last aspect of expression through gesture and the perception of gestures which I have not mentioned for lack of time, which shows that gestures cannot be totally linked to the pure expression of emotions. This has been analysed by Gombrich who writes:.

We may be happy in the ritual of applause at the end of a lecture or concert, but wnen we stand face to face with the performer we are embarrassed to hear everyone say, "thank you for a most interesting lecture. We try as we approach the lecturer to make our voice more charged with symptoms of sincere emotions, we press his hand in raptures, but even these tricks are quickly ritualized and most of us give up and lapse into inarticulacy.

U of California P, All subsequent references will be to this edition and will be given in the text. At the same time, as Alain Bony has pointed out, sentiment, in A Sentimental Journey relies on contacts between bodies: See Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines, This opposition is elaborated by Ernest H. Phaidon P, Of course, these ideas came from ongoing discussions, both in France see Port-Royal and in England see Wilkins and the Royal Society for instance.

In the eighteenth century, gestures were regarded as important in the domains of preaching, painting, rhetorics, and theatre.

Un comédien sentimental (Pocket) (French Edition)

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