Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative by J. A. Burrow

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

REVIEWS J. A. Burrow. Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 200. $55.00. J. A. Burrow’s new book, Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative, is a compact yet rich study of nonverbal communication in a selection of texts from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, France, and Italy: Troilus and Criseyde, Langland’s Piers Plowman, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the French romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the Prose Lancelot, Froissart’s Chronicles, and Dante’s Divine Comedy . As Burrow explains, his interest in the project stemmed from a sense that gestures in Sir Gawain and Green Knight and in Troilus and Criseyde are densely communicative in ways that are difficult for a modern reader to interpret. Gestures, like words, have a history. In a succinct review of the literature on nonverbal communication, the introduction notes that whereas earlier studies argued that many gestures and looks are universal forms of communication, current thinking is of the opinion that nonverbal communication has significant cultural variability. While everyone may smile, the social codes that elicit smiling and even the responses to a smile may be very different depending on time and place. The study includes general chapters on ‘‘Gestures’’ and ‘‘Looks’’ as well as two focused chapters on particular works—one on Gawain and Troilus and a final chapter on The Divine Comedy. Gestures are divided into three kinds: public gestures such as oath swearing; personal formalities of greeting and departure as well as expressions of emotion; and what nonverbal communication studies call ‘‘emblems,’’ signs such as beckoning and head-shaking. Burrow turns up much that is as expected but also plenty that is surprising. That gestures of submission, such as bowing and kneeling on both knees, were important rituals of greeting will surprise no one, but attention to their ritual significance sheds light on moments of variation. When the Maiden in Pearl greets the dreamer by bowing low and removing her crown, she makes a gesture that is inappropriate for a queen and hence marks her lower stature—that is, as the dreamer’s daughter. Burrow devotes considerable space to a history of the handclasp, concluding that while handclasps were common gestures of greeting, there is nothing to indicate that they included a handshake, a term that makes its first appearance in English in 1607. Then follows a fascinating reading of the only evidence of a handshake in medieval England. In a chronicle account of the meeting between Wat Tyler and Richard II at Smithfield in 1381, Tyler is recorded as PAGE 367 367 .......................... 10906$ CH11 11-01-10 13:59:26 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ‘‘shaking his arm forcefully and roughly’’ (p. 37). Burrow speculates that in medieval England the handshake may have been a popular greeting not practiced in upper-class circles, and hence was a crudely offensive gesture in greeting the king. Other gestures discussed include clapping, hand-wringing, and rending of the hair and clothes; kissing; and beckoning, pointing, and nodding. Medieval England and France, Burrow points out, were what anthropologists call ‘‘contact’’ cultures: same-sex friends kissed, held hands, walked arm in arm. In a memorable quote, Burrow cites Erasmus (1499) on England: ‘‘When you arrive anywhere, you are received with kisses on all sides, and when you take your leave they speed you on your way with kisses. . . . The world is full of kisses’’ (pp. 32–33). In some delightful ways, it seems, medieval England was not a distant mirror. The chapter ‘‘Looks’’ contains fewer surprises, perhaps because, as Burrow notes, facial expressions exhibit less variation than gestures. In the Canterbury Tales facial gestures get their greatest attention in The Clerk’s Tale, which uses anatomical expression as a central cipher in the question of Griselda’s legibility. Burrow makes the interesting observation that Chaucer uses the term ‘‘chere’’ differently from Petrarch to show that there is no difference between Griselda’s outward expression and her inward feelings: Chaucer’s Griselda is a model of patience, often understood as a virtue of total being. Also of note in this chapter is the discussion of winking, which, as Burrow notes, is...