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A Rough Guide to Insult in Plautus

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A Rough Guide to Insult in Plautus UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title A Rough Guide to Insult in Plautus Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/38z512bm Author Bork, Hans Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles A Rough Guide to Insult in Plautus A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Classics by Hans Spencer Bork 2018 © Copyright by Hans Spencer Bork 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION A Rough Guide to Insult in Plautus by Hans Spencer Bork Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Amy Ellen Richlin, Chair This dissertation examines how abuse-language and insults function in the plays of Plautus. Existing work on insults in Plautus is largely taxonomic, with small attention to the dynamics of insult among characters or to how insults are construed within the plays. Plautus is one of the most important Latin authors, and insult is a bedrock feature of his comic style. Moreover, every type of character in Plautus’ plays—from slaves to gods—uses insult freely regardless of status and generic type, but characters do not all react to insults in the same way. Some will react calmly to extreme abuse, and others will become distraught over mild critique. This suggests that the “valence” of insult words is not stable; indeed, supposedly neutral or even positive terms can be insulting if used in certain situations. Moreover, Plautus’ plays were designed to be realized through live, physical performance, and thus to understand the insult scenes they contain, we must consider not just the textual evidence of insult usage, but also how performance details— delivery, occasion, audience—also could have influenced or even altered surface meanings found in the text. Abuse scenes and their aftermath drive much of the dramatic action and humor in ii Plautus’ plays; the various ways that participants in these scenes deploy and respond to insults are thus crucial evidence for in-text themes, as well as the social culture of 3rd- and 2nd-century Rome. To understand Plautus’ comedy, we must also understand his insults. My project takes a “3D” view of insults in Plautus: I apply a theoretical method that combines performance theory and sociolinguistic theory—especially work on linguistic (im)politeness—to consider how insults function across and within social boundaries. I place special emphasis on the idea that “social intimacy” is the defining factor for determining how potential insult meanings are resolved; how characters react to insult is the result of interpersonal relationships, and not of pure lexical semantics. Intimacy and rapport are major aspects of scripted character interactions, but they also can develop between audience and actors during the theatrical event, and this relationship ultimately mediates the semantic valence of insult terms. I begin my study with a narrow analysis of a single, widespread insult (fur, “thief”), and then apply the generalized conclusions of that study to an analysis of multiple terms that occur in two-person scenes, with attention to how these affect (and are affected by) interpersonal relationships. I then widen my scope and consider how the realities of ancient performance, as well as the perspective(s) of a heterogeneous audience, would have affected these relationships. Lastly, I consider how insults can become humorous, a development guided by the tension between two opposing modes of expression: one that produces pleasure, and the other pain. Between these, the dynamics of insult play out on a large scale in the arc of plot development. iii The dissertation of Hans Spencer Bork is approved. Brent Harmon Vine Dorota Dutsch Amy Ellen Richlin, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv For Dana. … wish you were here. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ..........................................................................................................................................viii List of Tables ...............................................................................................................................................ix A Note on the Text ......................................................................................................................................x Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................xi Biographical Sketch ................................................................................................................................xii 1. Lexicon and Theory: Insults, Politeness, and Intimacy 1 1.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................1 1.2. Latin Scholarship on Insults, Comedy, and Insults in Comedy ................................................3 1.3. Plautine Language and Plautine Insult ...........................................................................................10 1.4. Sociolinguistics and Insult ..................................................................................................................14 1.5. Impoliteness and Intimacy ..................................................................................................................15 1.6. Chapter Breakdown and Overview................................................................................................... 24 2. The Cultural Grammar of Insults: a Case Study on Theft 27 2.1. Insults in Use............................................................................................................................................ 27 2.2. The Ambiguous Insult “fur” .................................................................................................................31 2.3. “Thief” as Insult, “Theft” as Humor ..................................................................................................36 2.4. Sympathy for a Thief .............................................................................................................................44 2.5. An Audience of Thieves ........................................................................................................................50 2.6. The Cook, the Thief, the Goddess Laverna, and Some General Conclusions .....................56 2.7. Chapter Appendix: Theft Terminology and the Italic ‘Cultural Koine’ .................................63 3. Actors + Words: Insult Dynamics in Comic Scenes 75 3.1. Insults on the Page .................................................................................................................................75 3.2. Status, Intimacy, and Insult: a Horizontal Test Case in Casina ................................................80 3.3. Slave Characters, Horizontal Insult, and “Jocular Mockery” ...................................................94 3.4. Sanctioned Insults and Verbal Play ................................................................................................107 3.5. Speaking Insult to Power: Vertical Insult Interactions .............................................................112 3.6. Insult, Power, and Status: Some Conclusions .............................................................................128 vi 4. Actors + Words + Audience: Three-way Dynamics in Comic Scenes 131 4.1. Insults on the Stage ...............................................................................................................................131 4.2. Viewing Staged Insult .........................................................................................................................142 4.3. Scene Revision: Considering Audience Attention...................................................................... 152 4.4. Overheard Insult in Aulularia: a Case Study.................................................................................. 166 4.5. Monologue and Ambiguous Insult in Captivi: a Case Study.................................................... 177 4.6. Insult and Staging: Some Conclusions .........................................................................................196 5. Insults and Joke Structure: Laughing at Psychic Pain 198 5.1. Insults as Jokes ......................................................................................................................................198 5.2. Insults, Face, and Laughter: Another Captivi Case-Study .......................................................204 5.3. “Benign Violations” in Onstage Abuse and Insult .....................................................................216 5.4. J okes and Insults in Bacchides: Part 1 — The Setup and Build ................................................. 223 5.5. Jokes and Insul ts in Bacchides: Part 2 — The Punchline(s) ....................................................... 238 5.6. Insult and Humor: Some Conclusions ..........................................................................................246 6. Conclusion: Comedy and the Cloud Chamber 248 Works Cited 254 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figures: 4.2 — Figure 1: Digital Stage Reconstruction, courtesy of UCLA RomeLab p.147 4.2 — Figure 2: Hypothetical Audience Placement Schema p.149 viii LIST OF TABLES Tables: 4.5 — Table 1: All of Ergasilus’ onstage appearances p.184 ix A
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