Writing on Hands

by Sherman, Claire Richter; Copenhaver, Brian P.; Lukehart, Peter M.; Trout Gallery; Folger Shakespeare Library

• ISBN13: 9780295980720
• ISBN10: 0295980729
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr

Summary

Writing on Hands focuses on the hand as a meeting place for matter, mind, and spirit. More than 80 images, dating primarily from the 15th to the 17th centuries, concern the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge from such diverse realms as anatomy, psychology, mathematics, music rhetoric, religions, palmistry, and alchemy. The book also addresses the relationship between the hand and the brain, sensory perception, the rhetoric of gesture, early forms of finger-spelling for the deaf, morality, and spirituality. It reintroduces early modern conceptual frameworks for learning, remembering, and recalling practical and abstract concepts by means of the hand. Throughout the text, images of the hand play a vital role in interpreting the search for achieving knowledge of the self and interpreting universal human experience.

In addition to the introduction by Claire Richter Sherman, there are essays by renowned scholars Brian P. Copenhaver, Martin Kemp, Sachiko Kusukawa, and Susan Forscher Weiss.

Table of Contents

Foreword and Acknowledgments of The Trout Gallery's Director	p. 7
Foreword of The Folger Shakespeare Library's Director	p. 11
Curator's Acknowledgments	p. 12
Introduction	p. 13
"The Handy Worke of the Incomprehensible Creator"	p. 22
A Manual Computer for Reckoning Time	p. 28
The Singing Hand	p. 35
A Show of Hands	p. 46
Catalogue of Works	p. 61
Prefatory Notes	p. 61
Reading the Writing on Hands	p. 64
The Handiwork of the Creator	p. 86
Messengers of the World	p. 128
Knowledge on Hand	p. 162
The Whole World in the Hand	p. 200
Guiding Hands	p. 244
Bibliography of Frequently Cited Sources	p. 268
Index of Authors and Their Works	p. 270
Index of Artists	p. 272
Photographic Credits	p. 276
Notes on Contributors	p. 277
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.