Action and Persuasion: Dramatic Performance in Eighteenth-Century France

In 18th-century France an intellectual battle was fought to raise the professional status of acting to the level of other arts involving rhetoric and expressive technique. The central strategy was based on the ancient rhetorical notion of actio, a theory of gesture, attitude, and facial expression already employed in the teaching and practice of religious, forensic, and political oratory. In this lucid study, Goodden explores the belief, championed by Diderot and others, that the primary mode of persuasion is not auditory, but visual.Goodden, Angelica is the author of 'Action and Persuasion: Dramatic Performance in Eighteenth-Century France', published 1986 under ISBN 9780198158363 and ISBN 019815836X.