Guillemette Bolens is Professor of Medieval and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her research interests are in the history of the body, kinesic intelligence, gestures, and embodied cognition in visual and verbal arts. She is the author of La Logique du corps articulaire: les articulations du corps humain dans la littérature occidentale (2000/2007), for which she was awarded the Latsis Prize and the Hélène and Victor Barbour Prize for Literary Criticism; The Style of Gestures: Embodiment and Cognition in Literary Narrative (2012; first published in French in 2008), and L'Humour et le savoir des corps: Don Quichotte, Tristram Shandy et le rire du lecteur (2016).

• Introduction: Kinesic Humor and the Dynamics of Gesture


• Chapter One: Milton: Surprised By Humor


• Chapter Two: Sterne: The Naturalness of a Toe Movement


• Chapter Three: Saint-Simon: Speed and Touch, or How to Push a Duke


• Chapter Four: Rousseau: Fast Breathing and Trembling Hands


• Chapter Five: Stendhal: Walking Styles and Emotional Practice


• Chapter Six: Ovid and Chrétien de Troyes: Pyramus, Thisbe, and Yvain's Hypersensitive Lion


• Chapter Seven: Cervantes: Laughing at a Metaphor


• Conclusion: Jacques Tati and Eddie Izzard


• Bibliography


• Index

Literature is one of the richest sources of information concerning the ways in which human beings play with cognition. Human cognition is grounded in the ability to feel, perceive, and move. Kinesic Humor examines literary works written in different languages and various historical periods, in which the cognitive processing of gestures and kinesic interactions trigger humorous effects. By bringing together literary studies, cognitive studies, gesture studies, and humor studies, this book offers an original perspective on literary artworks such as Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, Milton's Paradise Lost, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Rousseau's Confessions, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir.