In The Style of Gestures Guillemette Bolens examines the ways in which artists, authors, and readers draw on skills, sensorimotor capacities, and embodied knowledge when creating and consuming artistic and literary works. In so doing, the book offers an entirely 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 applications of neuroscientific and cognitive findings. Bolens considers the relevance of kinesic intelligence and mdash;our ability to understand the meaning of body movements, postures, gestures, and facial expressions and mdash;to the study and interpretation of literature. Through her discussions of works by John Milton, Jane Austen, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and medieval authors, Bolens shows how our experience of creative works draws on forms of cognition that are grounded in our nature as embodied creatures.This book represents one of the first contributions 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.
