Abstract
The capacity of the human face to affect behavior in the observer is obvious and unquestioned, yet we lack a usable philosophy of facial expression. This essay looks at one effect of the face in its highest moment of expressiveness: it discusses the redemptive force of a woman’s face, as portrayed in Dante’s works and in the modern film. Beatrice’s face becomes a mediator to heaven and thus establishes a long tradition of that trope in Petrarchan love lyric. The invention of photography and cinema enabled nuanced, emotionally charged facial representation that departed from the affect-free pictorial representation of woman’s face from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. In Michael Hazanivicius’s film The Artist, the face of a redemptive woman mediates access to a compassionate world of charm, glamour, and innocence.
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Jaeger, C.S. (2023). The redemptive power of the face: from Beatrice (Portinari) to Bérénice (Bejo). In: Downes, S., Trigg, S. (eds) Facing up to the History of Emotions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46413-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46413-3_5
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-031-46413-3
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