494 Reviews

Commynes is not a typical memorialist, and that his work shares more with the genre of
the essay, as developed and practiced by Montaigne, than later memoirs. Both highlight
the subjectivity of the Mémoires, which organizes and gives meaning to historical events
(Desan) and characterizes the memoir (Kuperty-Tsur). Michael Jones studies the recep-
tion of the Mémoires in England, which were translated into Latin in the mid-sixteenth
century, followed by a number of translations into English. Commynes’s work was also
excerpted in other historical texts. The readership was surprisingly diverse and included
a sizeable female public of owners and readers. Catherine Emerson looks at two nineteenth-
century editions of the Mémoires, one that excerpted Commynes’s Mémoires along with
the works of other medieval historians, and the other a multi-volume integral reproduc-
tion of medieval historical works. She discusses editors as readers, the relationship of the
memoir to history and chronicle, as well as the ideological and nationalistic uses to which
the Mémoires were put. Finally, Philippe Rigaud provides a fascinating discussion of a
certain class of ship, the galéasse, and a specific example of it belonging to Commynes.
Not unlike the memorialist himself, the ship in question had a long, useful, and varied
career.
Daisy Delogu, University of Chicago

Guillemette Bolens, The Style of Gestures: Embodiment and Cognition in Literary

Narrative. (Rethinking Theory.) Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.
Pp. xii, 233; b&w figs. $65. ISBN: 9781421405186. doi:10.1017/S0038713413000894
W e have recently witnessed a cognitive or neuroscientific turn as an increasing number
of scholars in the humanities and arts employ evidence from neuroscience in their re-
search. Within literary studies specifically, many authors have adopted elements from cog-
nitive theory to investigate how readers interpret and understand texts. Guillemette Bolens
makes a significant and innovative contribution to this interdisciplinary endeavor. Originally
published in French in 2008 as Le style des gestes: Corporéité et kinésie dans le récit lit-
téraire, this book explores the role of kinesic intelligence in literary interpretation. Bolens
is interested not only in “the interpretive processes whereby a reader retrieves kinesic in-
formation” from a narrative (12) but also in how authors construct corporeal atmo-
spheres by means of a particular kinesic style.
Bolens begins her introduction by outlining a number of key terms, among them kin-
esthesia (motor sensations), kinesthetic knowledge (knowledge based upon motor sensa-
tions and experiences), and kinesic intelligence (“our human capacity to discern and in-
terpret body movements, body postures, gestures, and facial expressions” of others [1]).
While we cannot share another’s kinesthetic experiences, our own kinesthetic knowledge
and kinesic intelligence allow us to make inferences about other people’s bodily states and
sensations. These inferences inform our encounters with other individuals, as well as our
reception of art.
Bolens then turns her attention to the neuroscience literature on embodied cognition,
particularly work on perceptual simulation and mirror neurons. She recognizes that per-
ceptual simulation is part of social cognition and, thus, that cultural and social forces help
shape the meaning we construct from this neural response. Gestures, therefore, provide
Bolens with a productive focus because they not only trigger the sensorimotor processes
of simulation but are also “prompted by notional and affective motivations … such as
intentions and beliefs” (20). Using a diverse assortment of literary examples, Bolens sug-
gests ways in which a narrative’s corporeal hermeneutics informs us about gestures. In
doing so, she presents a methodology for considering how a text’s kinesic style impinges

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 Reviews 495
upon the reader’s body “via the style of its gestures and the evocation of human expres-
siveness” (25).
For example, in Pride and Prejudice, when Darcy is surprised by Elizabeth Bennet’s pres-
ence at Pemberley, he responds kinesically: “He absolutely started” (29). Significantly,
Darcy’s gesture occurs within a world of bodies that Austen purposefully crafts, a kinesic
world conditioned by (physically expressed) ideals of civility and composure that are mir-
rored by Austen’s own controlled literary style. Accordingly, Bolens argues that “in order
to perceive the kinesic style of Pride and Prejudice, the reader must have access to the
novel’s overall literary style, corporeal atmosphere, and value system, in which control,
propriety, and their loss are overriding vectors of meaning” (33). Bolens pursues this idea
further in chapter 1 with Joyce’s Ulysses. She examines this narrative’s “interlaced textual
corporeality” (65) through which certain words are repeated in reference to specific char-
acters and then manifested in gesture, like the handshake between Dedalus and Bloom.
Moreover, she argues that Joyce’s way of narrating corporeality is echoed by the mode of
reading that the text encourages—the interlace generates vibrations that are crucial to the
event of reading.
Bolens turns to medieval literature in chapter 2 as she considers how action verbs tar-
get kinesic knowledge. Bolens analyzes Bede’s Historia ecclesistica gentis anglorum, La
queste del Saint Graal, and Layamon’s Brut, but the bulk of her chapter focuses on the
Jonah episode in Patience. Bolens suggests that this poem uses precise motor verbs to de-
velop “a kinesis of visceral movement” (75) that blurs distinctions between the literal and
the figural.
Chapters 3 and 4 investigate the intersubjectivity of emotion by analyzing narrative
gestures that embody “a complex and fluctuating social affect” (45). First, Bolens exam-
ines how verecundia or vergoigne (shame) is gesturally manifested in versions of the Lucrece
legend, specifically those written by Livy, Ovid, Augustine, Chaucer, Gower, and
Shakespeare. Chapter 4 tackles another “socio-affective constellation” by analyzing Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight as “a narrative about face-work and poise lost and re-
gained” (124). As with Lucrece, Gawain must inhibit his gestures in order to establish
and maintain crucial social relationships. Accordingly, Gawain’s social identity is narra-
tologically expressed and experienced via kinesis. The book concludes with a turn to cin-
ema as Bolens analyzes the kinesic expressivity of Jacques Tati’s films.
Bolens’s arguments regarding kinesic style are quite convincing, particularly her sug-
gestion that a text’s corporeal hermeneutics “is shaped by the way the author stylizes
language so as to create signifying gestures” (35). Yet, I found her application of per-
ceptual simulation less persuasive. She repeatedly suggests that narrative choices trigger
multimodal simulations but oftentimes does not elaborate upon how such responses might
influence the interpretive reading event. Commendably, Bolens undertook this English trans-
lation herself and specifically notes that the translation allowed her to expand her
“discussion of perceptual simulation by taking into account recent discoveries and de-
bates in the field of embodied cognition and embodied semantics” (xi). It may be due to
this subsequent expansion that the material on perceptual simulation, which is outlined
and applied very clearly in the introduction, does not always seem fully developed and
integrated into the chapter analyses.
Despite this criticism, I was compelled by Bolens’s ideas about how narratives activate
kinesic intelligence and, in fact, I did not think perceptual simulation was necessarily re-
quired to support her central arguments. Moreover, her methodology is not only relevant
to literary scholars but could be productively applied to film, performances, images, and
other genres. Although at times this reviewer would have appreciated less quoting and
more synthesis—and in particular wanted more analysis of Judith Butler’s theory at the

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496 Reviews
end of chapter 4—The Style of Gestures makes a valuable contribution to the growing
body of scholarship that uses theories of embodied cognition to examine our encounters
and interactions with art.
Jill Stevenson, Marymount Manhattan College

Monique Bourin and Pascual Martínez Sopena, eds., Anthroponymie et migrations

dans la chrétienté médievale (Collection de la Casa de Velázquez 116.) Madrid: Casa
de Velázquez, 2010. Pp. xxvi, 406. Y35. ISBN: 9788496820333.
doi:10.1017/S0038713413000900
T his volume merges two old themes in medieval historical research that have enjoyed a
recent resurgence. The first is the study of personal names, given stimulus by a project led
by Monique Bourin (Genèse médiévale de l’anthroponymie modèrne, 6 vols. in 8 parts
[1989–2008]). The second is the study of migration, which has seen the Middle Ages in-
tegrated into chronologically broader initiatives (e.g., Claudia Moatti, ed., La mobilité des
personnes en Méditerranée, de l’Antiquité à l’époque modèrne: Procédures de contrôle et
documents d’identification, 2004). The essays gathered here, initially presented at a col-
loquium in Madrid in 2007, explore the use of anthroponymic data to trace migration,
both local and long-distance, and also the way in which such data can illuminate the so-
cial composition of migrant groups and the evolution of naming practices in the context
of population movements. Collectively, the essays are very attentive to issues of method
and demonstrate the possibilities of new types of interdisciplinary collaboration.
A tangential preface by François Jacquesson, a summary introduction by the editors,
and a model conclusion by Patrick Geary frame fifteen papers in three chronologically
defined parts, each with its own introduction. The early medieval section features con-
tributions concerning Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Jean-Pierre Devroey, Pascal Chareille, and
Pierre Darlu), the career of Benedict of Aniane (Walter Ketteman), León (Carlos Reglero
de la Fuente), Castile (David Peterson), and Catalonia (Lluís To Figueras, Bourin, and
Chareille). Essays in the section on the central Middle Ages—which saw the widespread
introduction of surnames—address Northern Iberia (Pascual Martínez Sopena), Eastern
Iberia (Enric Guinot Rodríguez), Anglo-Norman England (Katherine S.B. Keats-Rohan),
the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Iris Shagrir), and Hungary (Nora Berend). For the later
Middle Ages—a period of major turnover in the stock of names—it is Normandy (Denise
Angers, Chareille), Rodez (Juliette Dumasy), Aragon (Carlos Laliena Corbera), and the
town of Porto (Isabel Maria Madueira A.P. Franco). Patrice Beck collaborated with
Chareille on the last section’s introduction.
The volume is very heavily focused on Iberia and Francia, although within Iberia at
least there is great variety, as the authors are able to hypothesize population movement
on the basis of, for example, the appearance of Arabizing, Basque, and Frankish personal
names in particular regions; comparison of the stocks of names in adjacent regions; and
analysis of topographical surnames in later medieval sources. The sources used manifest
greater range: narrative texts, such as a saint’s life, or Hungarian chronicles; administra-
tive records, such as polyptychs, tithe and tax rolls, or the Domesday Book; and records
of legal and commercial transactions. Many of the essays draw on massive corpora of
names: the Repertori d’Antroponims Catalans, with some 40,000 personal names from
ninth- and tenth-century Catalonia; the Continental Origins of English Landholders (1066–
1166) database, with 96,000 records; or a database of Norman rôles de monnéage, with
65,000 for the period from 1383 to 1515. Others work with numbers of a different order
of magnitude: 8,500 names in the polyptych of Saint-Germain; 6,100 names from the Latin

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