Silent Poetry

This book explores the dynamic interaction between art and the sign language of the deaf in France from the philsopheRs to the introduction of the sound motion picture. Nicholas Mirzoeff shows how the French Revolution transformed the ancienT regime metaphor of painting as silent poetry into a nineteenth-century school of over one hundred deaf artists. Painters, sculptors, photographers, and graphic artists all emanated from the Institute for the Deaf in Paris, playing a central role in the vibr