Silent Eloquence

Silent Eloquence is a book that celebrates the beauty and power of words. It is a collection of reflective essays written over 15 years, as the author moved across multiple countries (from Asia to Africa to Europe) and encountered different cultures and colorful personalities along the way. The stories are personal, but the themes are universal. They question our need to belong and to be different at the same time, the balance between being a global citizen and being loyal to nationalistic identities, the clash of the new and the old and many more. The topics covered are eclectic - from our appreciation of art, the effect of technology on creativity, the need for credibility in negotiations, the increasing impatience of the modern audience, the move away from breadth towards depth and apathy in social life - to name a few. It is written by an adventurer for those who relish adventure - not just in life, but also in the world of books. For after all, you never know what you might read in the next page, and that is just part of the joy of reading such a varied, engaging and honest collection.

One of the greatest aesthetic attractions in the ancient world was pantomime dancing, a ballet-style entertainment in which a silent, solo dancer incarnated a series of mythological characters to the accompaniment of music and sung narrative. Looking at a multitude of texts and particularly Lucian's "On the Dance", a dialogue written at the height of pantomime's popularity, this innovative cultural study of the genre offers a radical reassessment of its importance in the symbolic economy of imperial and later antiquity. Rather than being trivial or lowbrow, pantomime was thoroughly enmeshed in wider social discourses on morality and sexuality, gender and desire and a key player in the fierce battles about education and culture that raged in the ancient world. A close reading of primary sources, judiciously interlaced with a wealth of interdisciplinary perspectives, makes this challenging book essential for anyone interested in the performance culture of the Greek and Roman world.

The male and female alter egos, Satya and Maya, come together to create Silent Eloquence as a collection of stories each distinct from the other. Spanning their own age difference and biological distinctions, their collection puts forth the viewpoint of the different ways in which a man and a woman express their innate thoughts on the vast canvas of words, and collate them as stories for everyone to ponder. Silent Eloquence comes in two distinct parts of Satya, the male, and Maya, the female, whothrough their own experience in their own agessee the same world differently and focus on the human relationship differently. A unique experience of expressions that put the ordinary trivial happenings of life onto a larger canvas through observation and imagery.

One of the greatest aesthetic attractions in the ancient world was pantomime dancing, a ballet-style entertainment in which a silent, solo dancer incarnated a series of mythological characters to the accompaniment of music and sung narrative. Looking at a multitude of texts and particularly Lucian's "On the Dance", a dialogue written at the height of pantomime's popularity, this innovative cultural study of the genre offers a radical reassessment of its importance in the symbolic economy of imperial and later antiquity. Rather than being trivial or lowbrow, pantomime was thoroughly enmeshed in wider social discourses on morality and sexuality, gender and desire and a key player in the fierce battles about education and culture that raged in the ancient world. A close reading of primary sources, judiciously interlaced with a wealth of interdisciplinary perspectives, makes this challenging book essential for anyone interested in the performance culture of the Greek and Roman world.

"An outstanding book, one of the most intelligent, penetrating, and intellectually rigorous studies of pictorial theory in the literature of art history."--Michael Fried, author of Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and the Beholder in the Age of Diderot "Jacqeline Lichtenstein's groundbreaking contribution to intellectual history reconstructs the history of the age-old debate between philosophy and rhetoric, discourse and images, drawing and color, truth and delight. She shows how, in opposition to the Platonic suspicion of eloquence and colour, 17th-century French aesthetics discovers that painting involves deception more than imitation and delight rather than logic. Impressively erudite, Lichtenstein is also a seductive writer. A book about the pleasure of seeing and the pleasure of reading."--Thomas Pavel, author of The Feud of Language: A History of Structuralist Thought

This book is an ambitious critical investigation of the idea of eloquence as it informs classical and Renaissance thinking about literature.

The male and female alter egos, Satya and Maya, come together to create Silent Eloquence as a collection of stories each distinct from the other. Spanning their own age difference and biological distinctions, their collection puts forth the viewpoint of the different ways in which a man and a woman express their innate thoughts on the vast canvas of words, and collate them as stories for everyone to ponder. Silent Eloquence comes in two distinct parts of Satya, the male, and Maya, the female, who through their own experience in their own ages see the same world differently and focus on the human relationship differently. A unique experience of expressions that put the ordinary trivial happenings of life onto a larger canvas through observation and imagery.

"Translated with an uncanny sense for the overall point of Augustine's doctrine. In short, a very good translation. The Introduction is admirably clear." --Paul Vincent Spade, Indiana University