Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative

Author / Editor
Burrow, J. A. .

Title
Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative

Published
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Physical Description
xii, 200 pp.

Description
Explores the functions and significances of "non-verbal signs" (glancing, pointing, winking, hand-clasping, kissing, bowing, etc.) in medieval literature, concentrating on Dante's Commedia, the romances of Chrtien de Troyes, Froissart's Chronicles, the Prose Lancelot, Langland's Piers Plowman, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's Morte Darthur, and Chaucer's TC. Chaucer increases the amount of "gestural behaviour" that he found in his source, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, producing "one of the richest" of all medieval narratives for understanding the "part played by non-verbal communication in familiar private exchanges."

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.