Speech-Gesture Complex: Modernism, Theatre, Cinema

This study examines the representation of gesture in modernist writing, performance, and cinema, identifying a relationship between speech and gesture that is neither exclusively literary nor performative. It reveals how modernist authors' attention to the performed gestures of actors in theatre and cinema informs their work.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 31 August 2020
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

This new study explores the representation of gesture in modernist writing, performance, and cinema, introducing a novel theoretical term, the speech-gesture complex, to examine the relationship between speech and gesture. Anthony Paraskeva argues that this relationship is fundamental to the aesthetics and politics of modernist authors, and he demonstrates how it is closely informed by their attention to the performed gestures of actors in theatre and cinema. The study provides new close readings of major and neglected works by Kafka, Joyce, James, Lewis, Nabokov, and Beckett, revealing their complex relations with both theatre and cinema. It establishes a new critical-theoretical category and highlights an unexplored dialogue between Ibsen, Benjamin, Adorno, Griffith, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Brecht, Artaud, Lang, Meyerhold, Duse, and Garbo. Additionally, the study analyses central and neglected modernist texts alongside stage productions, styles of acting, film history, and performance theory.

Weight: 328g
Dimension: 157 x 233 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474473200