Face Value: Physiognomical Thought & the Legible Body in - Paperback

by Christopher Rivers (Author)

Explores ideas about human physical appearance expressed in French novels of the 18th/19th centuries (by Lavater, Marivaux, Balzac, Gautier, Zola), as well as the pseudoscience of physiognomy that influenced them. This science reads the body as an index to spiritual and intellectual qualities,