Volume 47, Number 20 · December 21, 2000
The Neapolitan Finger
By Joan Acocella
Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano)
by Andrea de Jorio, translated and edited by Adam Kendon
Indiana University Press, 517 pp., $49.95
I had heard about this book for years. The person who put the word out, at least in lay circles, was probably Luigi Barzini, in The Italians (1964). Praising his countrymen's gift for talking with their hands, Barzini lamented that so little had been written on this subject. To his knowledge, only one person—Andrea de Jorio, a Neapolitan priest—had attempted a lexicon of Italian hand gestures, in an 1832 volume entitled La Mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano ('The Mimicry of Ancient People Interpreted Through the Gestures of Neapolitans'). Barzini offered a little sample:
Review, 4824 words
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