The Legible Face and the Illegible Body: Face-Work in Lichtenberg, Haywood, and Garrick

I examine the potency and structural limitations of face-work, and of the performative body politic that face-work crafts, in eighteenth-century writings. I borrow this term from Erving Goffman to expand upon a pathognomic paradigm briefly sketched by G. C. Lichtenberg that considers the face dynamically, as social interface. I turn to eighteenth-century moral philosophies (as presented by Eliza Haywood, David Hume, and Adam Smith) to supplement Goffman's paradigm with accounts of sympathy that trace the mechanics of affective engagement and the vexed propriety of bodily visibility. My main case studies are the performances of Shakespearean actor David Garrick as seen through Lichtenberg's sympathetic gaze. I conclude by reexamining the Romantic-era invective against Garrick's legacy to suggest that similar mechanics of sympathetic disembodiment underwrite both the eighteenth-century fascination with Garrick's performances and the anti-theatricality of Romantic poets.