ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the sentimental body as the privileged site of a new revolutionary rhetoric of virtue in acting and oratory during the Revolution. From the silent gestural language of pantomime to the 'heated gestures' of Mirabeau and other leading orators of the Revolution, the sentimental body emerges on the public stage of the Revolution as a new conventionalized spectacle of morality and patriotism. Tiennette's comment expresses the shift in the body's representational mode in French theater of the Revolution from pantomime to physiognomy. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which the profound changes in the art of acting an area that lies outside the scope of both Dorinda Outram's and Antoine de Baecque's studies and in oratorical style during the Revolution reflect the appropriation of sentimental conventions into public sphere of performance and politics. Joseph-François Talma, like David and other artists of his generation, was shaped by experience of Revolution, and his art was shaped by it as well.
