Article published In:
GestureVol. 2:2 (2002) ► pp.259–281
Towards a grammar of gesture
A comparison between the types of hand movements of the orator and the actor in Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria 11.3.85–184
In his Institutio (11.3.85–88), Quintilian divides all human gestures into “imitative” and “natural,” with natural gestures forming a symbolic code comparable to spoken language. This language of gesture would have included hand movements equivalent to adverbs, pronouns, nouns, and verbs. Such symbolic gestures, spontaneously accompanying words, were the only ones that Quintilian recommended for the orator.
The actor’s gestures, dependent as they were on the lines spoken — and not on the actor’s thoughts and feelings — could not be spontaneous. The gestures made on stage were imitative of the various categories of the natural (i.e. symbolic) gestures, or of actions of everyday life.
Keywords: ancient rhetoric, Roman theatre
Cited by (5)
Cited by 5 other publications
Cardoso, Isabella Tardin
2020. Actors and Audience. In A Companion to Plautus, ► pp. 61 ff. 
Martin T. Dinter
2019. The Cambridge Companion to Roman Comedy,
Kendon, Adam
Nuessel, Frank
2007. Gesture and language. Semiotica 2007:166
[no author supplied]
2021. Data through Movement [Synthesis Lectures on Visualization, ],
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