Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau expressed the need to be genuinely understood. This need is manifest in the precision with which he describes in his Confessions the kinesthetic valence of his emotional experiences and the impact kinesic dialogues had on him. Several of the kinesic dialogues he records in his autobiography revolve around surprising shifts in tonicity, tone, and tempo in verbal utterances, gestures, and the vital action of breathing. This chapter considers four such passages, including a scene of writing in which Rousseau’s emotional state is specifically communicated by the very fact that his handwriting is unreadable owing to the trembling of his hand.

Saint-Simon

Admired by Stendhal and Marcel Proust, Saint-Simon wrote about his life in Versailles under Louis XIV. His purpose was that of a historian. Yet his style is so striking that it inspired major literary artists. Kinesic intelligence was a vital skill in Versailles, and Saint-Simon was acutely aware of all forms of nonverbal communication. He was also capable of communicating about kinesic interactions—with a sharp sense of humor. This chapter focuses on Saint-Simon’s portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Orléans, and his own intervention in the so-called Intrigue for the marriage of the Duke of Berry. In this episode, dynamic shifts, speed, and haptics (sensations interconnecting touch and kinesthesia) are a focus of attention, as they played a surprising role in Saint-Simon’s vivid experience of this historical moment.

Milton

John Milton plays with his readers’ embodied cognition. Reading Paradise Lost triggers complex perceptual simulations that are fascinatingly conflicting at the level of sensorimotricity. The carefully crafted effects thus elicited lead to a possible experience of humor. Kinesic incongruities in Paradise Lost are studied in this chapter to show how critics and expert readers respond to them, and to suggest that such effects are correlated with Milton’s investment in the notion of free will. The fact that Milton was able to create suspense in a plot known by all is addressed in relation to surprisingly dynamic gestures and the impact they may have on the ways in which readers conceive of the Fall of humankind.

Introduction

The cognitive ability to process kinesic stimuli is nonverbal. Sensorimotor concepts are predictive and operate primarily outside of language. Human beings are able to perform a precise gesture without knowing how to account for it verbally. In literature, verbal artists work with the connections afforded in their language between sensorimotor and verbal concepts. In turn, the act of reading their texts taps into readers’ kinesic intelligence and their ability to connect a verbal concept of movement to a sensorial and motor concept. When writers play with such connections, kinesic humor in literature is liable to be experienced. In such instances, shifts in rhythm, tonicity, and kinesthetic intensity are paramount within readers’ perceptual simulations. While perceptual simulations are the prime trigger of an experience of humor, they generally remain pre-reflective. They can, however, become a focus of reflective attention. The introduction to Kinesic Humor provides a theory for this claim, and substantiates it with preliminary literary examples.

Cervantes

Dynamic shifts in tonicity and tempo are numerous in Don Quixote. This chapter focuses, however, on a single action: Montesinos explains how he cleaned blood from Durandarte’s heart with a handkerchief. This narrated movement requires an analysis that takes into account the historical context in which Cervantes was writing, and the threat of censorship in early modern Spain. The text conveys a type of humor that overflows readers’ reception with sensorimotor over-specifications, thereby triggering perceptual simulations that implicitly debunk the validity of key social metaphors. Two such metaphors call for attention. The first is la limpieza de sangre, the name of an ideology relative to blood purity; the second is the metaphor of the stain, la mancha, prominent in the same ideology. A close analysis of reiterated lexical choices suggests that Cervantes was reclaiming in his work the pluricultural reality of the Spain in which he was living.

Sterne

Laurence Sterne’s masterpiece Tristram Shandy experiments with dynamics in nonverbal communication. Tonic shifts and variations in pace are systematically narrated in the interactions between characters. This chapter focuses on the moment when Walter Shandy, emotionally shocked, throws himself across his bed and lies on his stomach for a long time, Uncle Toby patiently waiting next to him. The kinesic dialogue taking place between the two men is echoed by the relationship Sterne establishes with his readers through his work. In both instances, the novel shows that making inferences about the mental states of others is practiced on the basis of unstable kinesic data. In this section of Tristram Shandy, Sterne theorizes that the meaning of movements and gestures comes from the transitions between attitudes, rather than from fixed facial or postural representations. The text prompts perceptual simulations of such dynamic transitions, leading to humorous effects involving readers.

Ovid and Chrétien de Troyes

Readers’ cultural expectations regarding literary masterpieces can hamper their experience of humor. This chapter studies the passage in Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain in which the knight’s faithful lion is said to run like a frantic hog. This simile is so surprising that it has generally been ignored not only by medievalists but also by medieval translators of Chrétien’s Yvain. Yet its potential humor is highly significant, as its disruptive quality constitutes an astute response to the already disruptive thrust of Ovid’s legend of Pyramus and Thisbe. The comparative and intertextual approach of this chapter brings together, on the one hand, Chrétien’s romance with its translations in Middle English, Old Norse, and Old Swedish, and on the other hand, Ovid’s seminal legend with its medieval adaptations by Chaucer, Gower, Boccaccio, and the anonymous author of the Old French Piramus et Tisbé. In every work, the dynamics of perception and cognition are central to the plot.

Conclusion

The conclusion considers two nonliterary performances of kinesic humor. In their respective routines about horse dressage, Jacques Tati and Eddie Izzard play with their audience’s sensorimotor knowledge and kinesic literacy. While speech is absent from Tati’s mime, it is part of Izzard’s show. In both cases, however, motor cognition operates at a pace that is faster than verbal elucidation. These two examples illustrate the ways in which we are able to cognitively process a gesture and respond to it without necessarily knowing how to account verbally for its humorous and effective complexity. The connections between sensorimotor concepts and verbal concepts cannot be taken for granted. The literary artists whose works are discussed in Kinesic Humor were able to play with such connections and communicate about the ever-surprising versatility of human embodied cognition, leading sometimes to laughter, one of the most obviously embodied of all cognitive events.

Stendhal

Stendhal was deeply interested in comedy. Even in such a tragic novel as Le Rouge et le Noir, powerful emotions are interwoven with humorous effects. A remarkable passage of Le Rouge et le Noir stages Julien Sorel interacting with Amanda Binet, a barmaid, and one of her lovers. Kinesic humor is central to this scene in which the complexity of kinesic communication is thematized through Julien’s failure to emulate the swaggering gait, dynamic facial gestures, and kinesic know-how of Amanda’s lover. Stendhal’s style is carefully considered in this chapter in relation to the challenge it represents for translators.