Terence’s Eunuchus

Suetonius (Vita Terenti 3) asserts that Eunuchus was Terence’s most commercially successful play. While we cannot confirm this claim, Eunuchus (as all Terence’s plays) enjoyed continuous readership after performances of it ceased in antiquity, was often cited by ancient writers and grammarians, and received a commentary in the 4th century ce. While Eunuchus is not without its critics—some have found fault with its dramatic structure and the ethics of its finale, to say nothing of its unique (in New Comedy) foregrounding of violent rape—it has generated enormous interest in both medieval and modern cultures, including numerous commentaries and translations. Eunuch’s unusual deception-plot, that is, the impulsive Chaerea’s costuming as a eunuch to sexually overpower Pamphila, no doubt accounts for much of the attention the play has attracted. For scholars of gender and sexuality, Eunuch invites interrogation of Roman attitudes toward sexual violence, norms of masculinity, and constructions of gender, as well as of the sexually ambiguous figure of the eunuch in this dramatic and cultural context. Eunuch’s prologue has also captivated scholars of Roman comedy and literary history more generally, as it so clearly articulates recurring concerns of Terence’s characteristically metadramatic prologues: Terence’s adaptation of both his Greek and Latin sources, including charges of “contamination” and “plagiarism,” and the broader challenges of finding novelty within circumscribed comic tradition (for Terence’s “anxiety of influence” see esp. Eun. 35–43). Some scholarship has been conducted on linguistic differentiation among Eunuch’s characters, and it is hoped that burgeoning sociolinguistic work on Plautine Latin will continue to be extended to Terence. Recent criticism has largely focused on aspects of Eunuch’s performance, both on the micro-level of costumes, stage movements, and musicality, and more broadly on the play’s pervasive metatheatricality.

Korozja władzy. Dystopijna zapowiedź przyszłości w komiksie „Sędzia Dredd. Ameryka” (1990) Johna Wagnera i Colina MacNeila

The article draws out the parallels between the story presented in Judge Dredd: America (1990) and the contemporary events taking place on the streets of the United States. The comic book itself takes place in the dystopian setting of Mega City One which deprives its citizens of freedom, self-determination, and takes away their hope for a better tomorrow. The immigrants, presented in the comic book, who are dreaming of realizing their American Dream, instead, fi nd themselves living an American nightmare. The similarities between the comic book and the previously published V for Vendetta are noted, as both novels have had a strong influence on the deheroisation of the protagonist of a superhero comic book, particularly in relation to the European comic book (1985–1990). Here, the morally ambiguous figure of Judge Dredd is relegated to the background, and the plot itself, as well as further research discussion, focuses on the characters of America Jara and her friend, Bennett Beeny. Their friendship significantly affects the story and the ultimate fate of America. Both of them are harmed by the system based on the superiority of the Judges, whose attitude is often reminiscent of the current actions of the American police, which is particularly interesting in the context of contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter. The authors of Judge Dredd: America provoke their readers to ask questions about the meaning of freedom, the place of an individual in a society whose actions are normalized and restricted by law, and even to rebellion against an oppressive authority. The article concludes by considering the meaning of democracy in modern socjety.

“A Man of Intrigue but of No Virtue”

This chapter reconstructs the life of Jean-Baptiste Stouppe (1623–1692), a Huguenot of Italian origin who in the 1650s moved to England and was employed by Oliver Cromwell in important diplomatic / espionage missions. Passing into the service of Louis XIV as a soldier, he published some pro-French propaganda works aimed at Protestants, including a famous description of Dutch religious life, published in 1673, notorious for its negative portrayal of Spinoza’s philosophy. While presenting himself as a defender of Protestant orthodoxy, Stouppe was in fact a libertine with magical-alchemical interests. An unscrupulous and ambiguous figure, his intellectual trajectory is clearly inserted in what has been defined as the crisis of the European conscience.

Age biases the judgment rather than the perception of an ambiguous figure

Older participants who are briefly presented with the ‘my wife/mother-in-law’ ambiguous figure estimate its age to be higher than young participants do. This finding is thought to be the result of a subconscious social group bias that influences participants’ perception of the figure. Because people are better able to recognize similarly aged individuals, young participants are expected to perceive the ambiguous figure as a young woman, while older participants are more likely to recognize an older lady. We replicate the difference in age estimates, but find no relationship between participants’ age and their perception of the ambiguous figure. This leads us to conclude that the positive relationship between participants’ age and their age estimates of the ambiguous ‘my wife/mother-in-law’ figure is better explained by the own-age anchor effect, which holds that people use their own age as a yard stick to judge the age of the figure, regardless of whether the young woman or the older lady is perceived. Our results disqualify the original finding as an example of cognitive penetrability: the participants’ age biases their judgment of the ambiguous figure, not its perception.

Fervor and Tenderness

The production of “major films” was an insistent preoccupation of Soviet cinema’s regulatory bodies both at government and at Party levels. A director regarded as particularly successful in this respect was Gleb Panfilov. His 1975 film, May I Speak?, addressed issues of personal responsibility. The balance of public and family duties, which were of enormous importance in political debates at the time the screenplay was written, and its sympathetic portrait of a leading official were reassuring to commentators at Goskino and in Party offices at various levels. Panfilov was, unlike most younger artists at Lenfilm, a member of the Party and valued his parents’ Communist principles. The argument of some post-Soviet commentators—that May I Speak? represents a veiled attack upon its protagonist, Elizaveta Uvarova—is difficult to sustain. Yet Uvarova remains an ambiguous figure, and the treatment of her is enigmatic, not least in terms of gender identities, as the discussion here shows.

Perception of an Ambiguous Figure: Subconscious Social Group Bias or Anchor Effect?

Older participants who are briefly presented with the ‘my wife and my mother-in-law’ ambiguous figure estimate its age to be higher than young participants do. This finding is thought to be the result of a subconscious social group bias that influences participants’ perception of the figure. Because people are better able to recognize similarly aged individuals, young participants are expected to perceive the ambiguous figure as a young woman, while older participants are more likely to recognize an older lady. We replicate the difference in age estimates, but find no relationship between participants’ age and their perception of the ambiguous figure. This leads us to conclude that the positive relationship between participants’ age and their age estimates of the ambiguous ‘my wife and my mother-in-law’ figure is better explained by the own-age anchor effect, which holds that people use their own age as a yard stick to determine the age of the figure, regardless of whether the young woman or the older lady is perceived. Assimilation of others’ characteristics to one’s own is particularly likely to occur in uncertain circumstances that provide little information to base judgments on, such as estimating the age of a briefly presented ambiguous figure.

The Flesh of Time: Solaris and the Chiasmic Image

This chapter explores Solaris’s chiasmatic interpenetration of the real and the phantasmatic in the context of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the flesh defined as the non-physical substrate of the visible world and the virtual. Thanks to its genre of science fiction, Efird argues, Solaris accomplishes more convincingly the physical realization of the characters’ dream imagery, which vividly exemplifies Tarkovsky’s cinematic materialism. Besides numerous scenes with mirrors, the dynamic chiasm of the flesh, which is both physical and spiritual, fully manifests itself in the ambiguous figure of Hari who is simultaneously the object of Kelvin’s memory as well as the self-conscious subject on her own.