“A Kind of Eloquence of the Body”: Quintilian’s Advice on Delivery for the Twenty-First-Century Rhetor

ABSTRACT

This essay makes the case that the account of delivery featured in the Institutio Oratoria remains germane to contemporary speech pedagogy. Quintilian emphasizes that (1) powerful delivery is central to eloquent public speaking; (2) delivery functions in concert with the other canons of rhetoric; and (3) delivery is governed by general rhetorical concepts such as decorum and ethos. Furthermore, scrutiny of Quintilian’s perspectives on gender and power can lead to fruitful rethinking of current pedagogy’s traditionalist tendencies.

Notes

^1. Quintilian also uses the term pronuntiatio for delivery (11.3.1; 3.3.1). Actio, which is actually closer to “enactment” or “performance” than “delivery”—the English term typically used for this canon of rhetoric—is the broader of the two Latin terms.

^2. All quotations from the Institutio have been drawn from Donald Russell’s 2000 translation.

^3. Jakob Wisse maintains that in the Ciceronian tradition central to Quintilian’s approach, ethos is “aimed at arousing the light emotion of sympathy” (236).

^4. By disparagingly associating the elocution movement with acting, O’Hair et al. follow many traditional histories of speech and communication (see Cohen 3; Howell “English” 3; Howell, Eighteenth-Century 145–256). For more sophisticated accounts of the elocutionary movement and its twenty-first-century legacy, see, for example, Benaji; Donawerth Conversational; Donaworth “Negotiating”; Sloane.

^5. For an example of decorum’s culturally disruptive potential, see Pérez and Brouwer.