"Andrea de Jorio's La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano (Gestural Expression of the Ancients in the Light of Neapolitan Gesturing) was first published in Naples in 1832. It is the first book ever written which presents what is, in effect, an ethnographic study of gesture. Treating gesture as a culturally established communicative code, analogous to language, the book sets out to describe, with reference to an explicitly defined cultural group, the gestural expressions of ordinary people as these are used in every-day life. It also deals with numerous issues important for any semiotics of gesture, such as the question of the relationship between physical forms and meaning, the problem of how to present a description of the gestural repertoire of a community in a consistent manner, the importance of context for the interpretation of gesture, how gestures may be combined, and how they develop as metaphorical expressions."--BOOK JACKET.