Aquiline nose
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An aquiline nose (also called a Roman nose) is a human nose with a prominent bridge, giving it the appearance of being curved or slightly bent. The word aquiline comes from the Latin word aquilinus ("eagle-like"), an allusion to the curved beak of an eagle.[2][3][4] While some have ascribed the aquiline nose to specific ethnic, racial, or geographic groups, and in some cases associated it with other supposed non-physical characteristics (i.e. intelligence, status, personality, etc., see below), no scientific studies or evidence support any such linkage. As with many phenotypical expressions (e.g. 'widow's peak', eye color, earwax type) it is found in many geographically diverse populations.
In the context of scientific racism
[edit]In pseudoscientific racist discourse, especially that of post-Enlightenment Western scientists and writers, the Roman nose has been characterized as a marker of beauty and nobility,[5] but the notion itself is found early on in Plutarch, in his description of Mark Antony.[6] The supposed science of physiognomy, popular during the Victorian era, made the "prominent" nose a marker of Aryanness: "the shape of the nose and the cheeks indicated, like the forehead's angle, the subject's social status and level of intelligence. A Roman nose was superior to a snub nose in its suggestion of firmness and power, and heavy jaws revealed a latent sensuality and coarseness".[7]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Jabet, George (1852). Notes on Noses. Richard Bentley. p. 9.
- ^ Eliza Cook (1851). Eliza Cook's Journal. J. O. Clark. p. 381.
- ^ John C. Fredriksen (1 January 2001). America's Military Adversaries: From Colonial Times to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 432. ISBN 978-1-57607-603-3.
He matured into a powerfully built man, tall, muscular, with an aquiline profile that gave rise to the name Woquni, or "Hook Nose." The whites translated this into the more familiar moniker of Roman Nose. In his early youth, Roman Nose ...
- ^ Henry Neuman; Giuseppe Marco Antonio Baretti (1827). Neuman and Baretti's Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages: Spanish and English. Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins. p. 65.
Aquiline, resembling an eagle ; when applied to the nose, hooked.
- ^ Adams, Mikaëla M. (2009). "Savage Foes, Noble Warriors, and Frail Remnants: Florida Seminoles in the White Imagination, 1865-1934". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 87 (3): 404–35. JSTOR 20700234.
- ^ Jones, Prudence J. (2006). Cleopatra: A Sourcebook. U of Oklahoma P. p. 94. ISBN 9780806137414.
- ^ Cowling, Mary (1989). The Artist as Anthropologist: The Representation of Type and Character in Victorian Art. Cambridge. Cambridge UP. Quoted in McNees, Eleanor (2004). "Punch and the Pope: Three Decades of Anti-Catholic Caricature". Victorian Periodicals Review. 37 (1): 18–45. JSTOR 20083988.
Further reading
[edit]- Barolsky, Paul (2007). Michelangelo's Nose: A Myth and Its Maker. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780271032726.