Humanity has evolved a wide range of non-verbal display or “body language” designed to facilitate social interchange between individuals and groups, particularly in the conveying of the emotional state. However, with the advent, over time, of language as the primary means of communication between people, non-verbal display has assumed something of a lesser role and the ability of humans to observe has, to some extent been distracted by our need to listen or to read. This change of emphasis has perhaps been accelerated in recent times, especially in western developed nations, with so much of our communication now being conducted via "artificial media", e.g., telephone, e-mail and the internet. Nevertheless, the body’s non-verbal display system remains an integral and indeed necessary component of face to face contact and in the expression of our emotions, often operating despite our best efforts to turn it off. It continues to provide a wealth of information for those observers with the capacity to attune their focus.
The focus of my proposed research paper is to examine the vocabulary and incidence of non-verbal display in Homer's Iliad, one of the earliest extant pieces of literature that stands within a corpus of oral poems at the head of the European literary tradition. The Iliad recalls and relates, not only the battles that take place on the plain outside the walls of Troy between the Achaean coalition and the Trojans and their allies, but also the battles that take place within these two forces as a result of the emotional stresses brought on by this life and death struggle. One of the great advantages of language is its capacity to capture and store, with the aid of memory, moments in time, and reproduce those moments, either through a telling, in an oral tradition, or the writing of a story, as in literate societies. To reproduce these stories is one thing but to bring them to life requires the keeper of the memory to recreate the emotions of the moment being recalled. This necessity has required language to develop a rich vocabulary of words in order to describe the non-verbal display that accompanies emotional expression. Until recently Homeric studies have largely overlooked the area of non-verbal display, preferring rather to concentrate on the words and deeds of the Homeric heroes. More recently, studies have sought to delve behind the often-formulaic words of these heroes into the wealth of non-verbal accompaniment that the author provides. My investigation will seek to refine and extend the work undertaken in some of these more recent studies with a particular regard for any distinctions in emotional expression, in terms of ethnicity, gender and perceived social status.
The paper, although remaining firmly grounded in the Classics disciplines, has, of necessity, a strong cross-disciplinary flavour, requiring research in the areas of anthropology, behavioural science, non-verbal communication, translation theory, linguistics, and conversation analysis. It is hoped that the results of my study will enhance our understanding of the emotional nature of oral epic performance and the associated difficulties in transcribing such compositions into a written format as well as providing further definition of the essential humanity of the peoples of the Homeric epic.