Nature Embodied
eBook - PDF

Nature Embodied

Gesture in Ancient Rome

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Nature Embodied

Gesture in Ancient Rome

About this book

Bodily gesture. A Roman worshipper spins in a circle in front of a temple. Faced with death, a Roman woman tears her hair and beats her breasts. Enthusiastic spectators at a gladiatorial event gesticulate with thumbs. Examining the tantalizing glimpses of ancient bodies offered by surviving Roman sculptures, paintings, and literary texts, Anthony Corbeill analyzes the role of gesture in medical and religious ritual, in the gladiatorial arena, in mourning practice, in aristocratic competition of the late Republic, and in the court of the emperor Tiberius. Adopting approaches from anthropology, gender studies, and ecological theory, Nature Embodied offers both a series of case studies and an overarching narrative of the role and meanings of gesture in ancient Rome.


Arguing that bodily movement grew out of the relationship between Romans and their natural, social, and spiritual environment, the book explores the ways in which an originally harmonious relationship between nature and the body was manipulated as Rome became socially and politically complex. By the time that Tacitus was writing about the reign of Tiberius, the emergence of a new political order had prompted an increasingly inscrutable equation between truth and the body--and something vital in the once harmonizing relationship between bodies and the world beyond them had been lost.



Nature Embodied makes an important contribution to an expanding field of research by offering a new theoretical model for the study of gesture in classical times.

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Yes, you can access Nature Embodied by Anthony Corbeill in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Roman Ancient History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. CONTENTS
  5. List of Illustrations
  6. List of Abbreviations
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. INTRODUCTION: Gesture as a Cultural System
  9. CHAPTER 1: Participatory Gestures in Roman Religious Ritual and Medicine
  10. CHAPTER 2: The Power of Thumb s
  11. CHAPTER 3: Blood, Milk, and Tears: The Gestures of Mourning Women
  12. CHAPTER 4: Political Movement: Walking and Ideology in Republican Rome
  13. CHAPTER 5: Face Facts: Facial Expression and the New Political Order in Tacitus
  14. Bibliography
  15. Index Locorum
  16. General Index