Inspiciat, si lubet : quelques aspects du regard chez Plaute

Abstract

We here deal with a few particular aspects of the eyesight as represented in Plautus’s comedies, notably the relation it entertains with madness, love and painting: the point has in each case to do with an altered, distorted eyesight, producing some other reality, a fiction within that fiction which the theatre is already by itself. The feigned alteration of the eyesight through which the allegedly mad character represents and deconstructs on stage the mechanisms of perception is impregnated thus with madness, recalls that vision is relative. Everything is a matter of point of view: sight on stage is thus metaphorically reduplicated with Plautus by the contemplation of painting, opening the way to a manipulation of the eyesight by the character of the slave.

Keywords

• eyesight
• Plautus
• theatre
• perception
• madness
• love