Reading is delusion. In order to read, we have to suspend certain standards of reality and accept others; we have to offer ourselves to deceit, even if it is an act of deception of which we are acutely aware. One way of considering this paradoxical duality in the act of reading (being deceived while being aware of the deception) is more or less consciously to posit multiple levels of reading, whereby the deceived reader is watched by an aware reader, who is in turn watched by a super-reader; and so it continues. The ancient art critics, obsessed as they were with deceptive realism, provide in anecdotal form a good example of such multiplicity of perception when they tell stories of birds trying to peck at painted grapes, horses trying to mate with painted horses, even humans deceived by the lifelikeness of works of art. Such stories act as easy but potent signifiers of ‘realism’ in ancient art criticism, by showing the reactions of a ‘naive reader’ (the animals) whose deception the aware reader can enter into but also see exposed. In verbal or visual art parading itself as realistic, the artistic pretence of a pose of reality is, at some level, intended to be seen as deceptive; when it is non-realistic, or anti-realistic, or even stubbornly abstract (which it rarely is), art still demands that the reader suspend ordinary perception. But deception alone is not enough: ‘deceit’ only becomes artistic when a viewer sees through it, for a work of art which is so lifelike that no-one realizes it is not real has not entered the realm of art. The appreciation of deception happens at the moment when the deception is undone, or by the imaginative creation of a less sophisticated reader who has not seen through the deceit. That is what happens in comedy, more overtly than in other artforms, but in the same way.

The art of deceit: Pseudolus and the nature of reading

Reading Greek and Roman New Comedy through Oscar Wilde's Society Plays

/pdf/humanitas-et-ratio-reflections-of-ludwig-edelstein-s-life-2r6rtb73la.pdf

Humanitas et ratio : reflections of Ludwig Edelstein's life and work in his extant epistolary network

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. How to Write about Writing: 1. When? Otium as 'time to write'; 2. What? Munus as the 'gift of duty'; 3. Where? Libellus: polished and published; Part II. The Textualization of Display: 4. The problem with liberal performance; 5. From public display to textual display; 6. The poetics of literary obligation; Part III. The Materialization of the Text: 7. An object of Catullan affection; 8. Brutus: the dialogic personification of the Republican voice; Epilogue; Appendix: what 'society of patrons?' A prosopography of the players.

Catullus, Cicero, and a Society of Patrons: The Generation of the Text

s a long-standing admirer of George Walsh’s The Varieties of Enchantment, I was honored to receive the invitation to deliver the Walsh Lecture for 2007–8 at the University of Chicago’s Department of Classics. I was especially pleased because I had in mind to use the opportunity of the lecture in order to develop some ideas about the way that Plautus works enchantment upon his audience. Since Walsh’s subtitle is Early Greek Views of the Nature and Function of Poetry, it is perhaps no surprise that he does not have Plautus in his index, but it seemed appropriate to offer a paper that presented a Latinist’s take on the issues that had so productively intrigued him. The leading idea of the lecture was to be that in Pseudolus Plautus used the concept of financial credit as a key trope for configuring the kind of belief that the audience grants to the stage event. By the time of the lecture itself in October 2007, ten months after the invitation, the topic of financial credit had become disturbingly topical, as the U.S. subprime credit crisis of that late summer sent its ripples out all over the world and the British bank of Northern Rock turned into Northern Sand before our very eyes. At the time of writing up the lecture for publication, A

Crediting Pseudolus: Trust, Belief, and the Credit Crunch in Plautus’ Pseudolus

Plautine Ingredients in the Performance of the "Pseudolus"

Fama ~ae, f . . . 1 News, tidings, b a malicious report, slander. 2 Rumour, hearsay (as a source of information), b (personified). 3 Tradition, story. 4 Public opinion, talk; ... 5 The report which a person has, one's reputation. ... 6 a One's good name, reputation; (spec, of a woman, w. ref. to chastity). b ill repute, notoriety. 7 Fame, glory, renown, b (personified), c (transf.) a source or object of fame, 'pride'.

Judith P. Hallett

Papers

Plautine Ingredients in the Performance of the "Pseudolus"

Sulpicia and Her Fama: An Intertextual Approach to Recovering Her Latin Literary Image

Martial's Sulpicia and Propertius' Cynthia

Women's Voices and Catullus' Poetry

Edith Hamilton (1867-1963)