Anti-Portraits: Poetics of the Face in Modern English, Polish and Russian Literature (1835-1965)Anti-Portraits: Poetics of the Face in Modern English, Polish and Russian Literature (1835-1965) is a study of a-physiognomic descriptions of the face. It demonstrates that writers such as George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, Edgar Allan Poe, Nicolay Gogol, Virginia Woolf and Witold Gombrowicz vigorously resisted the belief that facial features reflect character. While other studies tend to focus on descriptions which affirm physiognomy, this book examines portraits which question popular face-reading systems and contravene their common premise – the surface-depth principle. Such portraits reveal that physiognomic formula is a cultural construct, invented to abridge, organise and regulate legibility of the human face. Most importantly, strange and ‘unreadable’ fictional faces frequently expose the connection between physiognomic judgement and stereotyping, prejudice and racism. |
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Anti-portraits: Poetics of the Face in Modern English, Polish and Russian ... Kamila Pawlikowska No preview available - 2015 |
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According Adam Bede aesthetic Anna Karenina anti-physiognomic anti-portraits appearance argues artistic Baudelaire beauty body body without organs character Charles Baudelaire cinema codes connection critics cultural Daniel Deronda Deleuze and Guattari depict descriptions of faces desire Edgar Allan Poe Edited emotions essay explains eyes face-reading face's facial features fantastic Ferdydurke fiction Florensky gaze gęba George Eliot Gogol Gombrowicz human face ideal Jewish Kovaliev's language Lavater Lavater's Levinas Ligeia literary London look mask meaning Mirah modern modernist moral mouth narrative narrator nature Nikolai Gogol Nineteenth-Century nomic nose Novel observes ognomic painted Penguin perceived perception person photographic phrenology physical physiog physiognomic physiognomic description physiognomics and phrenology Poe's portraits portraiture protagonist readers recognised Roderick's Rossetti Russian sitter smile soul spiritual stereotypes surface and depth surface-depth paradigm tale theories tion Tolstoy Tolstoy's traditional Translated Vanessa Bell Victorian Virginia Woolf visual Witold Gombrowicz writing York