Cahiers des Études Anciennes (May 2024)
Discipulus uenio ad magistras (Plaute, Stichus 105) : les figures comiques de maîtres et d’élèves, et leurs interactions ludiques
Abstract
In Roman comedy, very few masters and pupils can be found – only the slave Lydus, in Plautus’ Bacchides, is clearly identified as a paedagogus. However, the vocabulary associated with teaching (doceo, disco, etc.) and with the status of master (magister) and pupil (discipulus) feeds a recurrent school metaphor in the comedies of Plautus and Terence. After explaining the presence of this metaphor and studying the emblematic case of the pedagogue Lydus and his rebellious discipulus, this article proposes an analysis of several confrontations between comic avatars of the master figure (senex father of the family, lena teaching to the meretrix or to the young man, among others) and their generally recalcitrant pupils, by exploring the forms that their interactions take, while observing their modalities from the perspective of pragmatics and interactional approaches to conversation. Although the question-and-answer form seems to be used to signify an asymmetrical master-student relationship, it is rarely used, and is often followed by a debate in which the student challenges the master’s dominant position. Putting teaching into dialogue is also a way of endangering the teacher, whose mastery (both theoretical and playful) is challenged by the pupil himself. The use of sententiae or praecepta, forms of authoritative speech typical of lesson-givers, is subject to the same kind of play of variation and rivalry, with the pupil sometimes becoming the master. A study of several examples of variations in the situations and forms associated with the master-student duet shows that, in the scenes that exploit this duet, what is at stake is less the transmission of knowledge or moral principles than the playful mastery of the scene. The master-student relationship, which is also used to build unconventional characters (an overly wise adulescens, a young girl disguised as a meretrix, a father who gives in to his daughters – variations that the plot imposes on comic personae), serves above all, as a formal and interactional model, to stage the relationships of playful rivalry that the characters maintain: lesson giver or pupil, all are trying to be masters of the play.
