Rhetorical Delivery for Renaissance English: Voice, Gesture, Emotion, and the Sixteenth-Century Vernacular Turn

In the sixteenth century, perceptions of the English language changed from one of barbaric inadequacy to that of rare eloquence. Accounts for this shift tend to focus on literary or textual production, but this essay shows how these very linguistic concerns were motivated by the nonlinguistic practices appropriate to Latin rhetorical delivery (pronuntiatio et actio). The emotional contagion, legitimization of the inarticulate, cultural contextualization, and overcoming of natural physical defects that all stand at the heart of delivery here situate vernacular uplift at the corporeal level. The essay ends with an illustrative reading of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.