Monarchial Body and Body Monarch: The Physiognomy of Monarch in Italian and Chinese literary description
Monarchial Body and Body Monarch: The Physiognomy of Monarch in Italian and Chinese literary description

Summary/Abstract: In the images of monarchy there are both the deliberate construction and promotion by central governmental authority and the creation by a public projecting their own desires and anxieties on to a prominent figure. (Hackett 2001: 814) In many cases, especially for portraits of ruler in literature, one can see the iconographic tradition. It was the result of “reconstructions" or “inventions". (Casini 2000: 75–88) Many studies have made important contributions to it, yet there still seems to be more things to do. The notion that inner excellence is reflected in superficial beauty–as well as the reverse of that notion–was unquestionably a deep-seated habit of Greek thought, reflected in the perfection of Homer’s gods and heroes–and the inferiority of Thersites–and the ubiquitous expression. Furthermore, the idea that physical appearance signified certain aspects of nature and character suffused Greek culture, though in various ways and with varying degrees of sophisticated reflection, from the vulgar popularity of the handsome to the rather distasteful Greek disapproval of Oriental and barbarian physical traits to the philosophical efforts in the Hippocratic corpus to explain the relationship between climate, physique and disposition. It is the role that physiognomy plays. (Jouanna 1989: 172) As a mechanism to make communication between body and the exterior world, physiognomy is one of the most vivid perspectives to examine the relationship between the individual and the world. Just as G. B. Della Porta said, the physiognomy costume is correspondent the worldly custom.

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