HORACE'S MONUMENT

Exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum altius, quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens possit diruere aut innumerabilis annorum series et fuga temporum. Horace, Odes 3.30.1–5 I have finished a monument more durable than bronze and higher than the royal situs of the pyramids, the kind which neither biting rain nor the uncontrolled North Wind can destroy, or the procession of unnumbered years or flying time. The paper argues that altius in line 2 is variously inappropriate; a clue to the true reading is to be found in the passage of Pindar to which Horace is alluding.

In Favour with Queen and Nation: Giulia Grisi, the “Fugitive Norma” in London

Giulia Grisi (1811–1869), the first Adalgisa in Vincenzo Bellini's Norma (Milan, 1831), broke her Italian contract and left for Paris in 1832, where she became prima donna under Gioachino Rossini at the Théâtre Italien. In addition, she made her London debut in 1834, replacing Maria Malibran in the young Victoria's eyes and ears with her singing, acting, and flawless beauty, especially in the operas of the future Queen's favourite, Vincenzo Bellini. Grisi's real goal, however, was to conquer Giuditta Pasta's throne by embodying Norma: she first performed the role in London in 1835, and then in almost every season until 1861. Despite her success, she was unjustly attacked for copying Pasta, as established by Thomas G. Kaufman. Bellini himself likewise misjudged her, stating that “the elevated characters she does not understand, does not feel, because she has neither the instinct nor the education to sustain them with the nobility and the lofty style they demand.” “In Norma she will be a nonentity; … the role of Adalgisa is the only one suited to her character.” Nonetheless, even hostile critics like Henry F. Chorley had to acknowledge that “her Norma, doubtless her grandest performance … was an improvement on the model [i.e. Pasta]; … there was in it the wild ferocity of the tigress, but a certain frantic charm therewith, which carried away the hearer – nay, which possibly belongs to the true reading of the character.” The purpose of this article is to investigate Grisi's London reception, primarily in the context of her Norma performances.

HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALIST

In Group Agency, List and Pettit (L&P) defend ‘non-redundant realism’ about group agency, a view on which (A) facts about group agents are not ‘readily reducible’ to facts about individuals, and (B) the dependence of group agents on individuals is so holistic that one cannot predict facts about group agents on the basis of facts about their members. This paper undermines L&P's case in three stages. §1 shows that L&P's core argument is invalid. L&P infer (A) and (B) from two facts: (1) that group agents must often believe what few members personally believe, and (2) that a group agent's beliefs in certain propositions must often ‘depend on’ member attitudes to distinct propositions. I note that (2) is ambiguous, and that the only true reading of it is irrelevant to the status of (A). I argue further that (1) cannot support (A), since a group agent's belief in P may neatly constitutively depend on member attitudes to P that are weaker than personal belief. §2 makes this idea concrete with a plausible toy theory of group belief that implies it. While this kind of theory is popular in the literature on joint belief, L&P never discuss it – a striking fact, since it explains why (1) is true. Having made these points, I turn to argue in §3 that (B) is either false or uncontroversial.

What is a reading error?

ABSTRACTEarly efforts to apply knowledge of dialect differences to reading stressed the importance of the distinction between differences in pronunciation and mistakes in reading. This study develops a method of estimating the probability that a given oral reading that deviates from the text is a true reading error by observing the semantic impact of the given pronunciation on the child's reading of the text that immediately follows. A diagnostic oral reading test was administered to 627 children who scored in the 33rd percentile range and below on state-mandated assessments in reading in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Atlanta, Georgia, and California elementary schools. Subjects were African American, European American, and Latino, including Latinos who learned to read in Spanish and in English first. For 12 types of dialect-related deviations from the text that were studied, the error rates in reading the following text were calculated for correct readings, incorrect readings, and potential errors. For African Americans, many of these potential errors behaved like correct readings. The opposite pattern was found for Latinos who learned to read in Spanish first: most types of potential errors showed the high percentage of following errors that is characteristic of true errors.

Iris Murdoch: Fantasy Vs. Imagination

Iris Murdoch is an exponent of the view that fictional narratives are best written by observing other people realistically and as entirely separate from the author's private life, with its memories and desires. Convinced that it is possible for a novelist to be “objective,” she has written over twenty novels, relying on what she terms “imagination,” i.e., attention to the uniqueness of individuals, without subjective distortion dictated by the author's unconscious conflicts or ideological obsessions. The opposite of “imagination,” in Murdoch's view, is “fantasy,” or the exploitation by the novelist of his or her emotional problems, traumatic experiences, and other “solipsistic” influences. In pursuit of her goal of strict realism, Murdoch paradoxically has embraced Plato's view that ultimate reality, the abstract essence of things, exists outside the illusionary world of appearances. Her novels often are intended to illustrate the difficulties involved in arriving at a “true” reading of what transpires in human relationships, and how, in the absence of truth her self-deceived protagonists are debarred from the pursuit of virtue. The significance of Murdoch's approach for understanding the creative process is that she assigns primary roles to attention and cognition on the part of the novelist and is dismissive of the contribution of conative and affective determinants. Her fictional portraits are nevertheless as compassionate as her view of society is satirical, raising questions as to whether Murdoch has been able to maintain her self-imposed psychological distance from her materials, and whether, indeed, any writer can profitably do so.

Emendations and Interpretations in the Greek Anthology

Gow and Page are of the opinion that Planudes’ àένναος in the fifth line of this epigram may be not his conjecture but the true reading, and reject Jacobs' commonly received emendation àєί λáνος, with κηρο in the following line. But I have no doubt that for the two words μέν àλανóς (the μέν is unobjectionable but not obligatory) we should read μєμαλαγαγμένος for ó μєμαλαγαγμένος κηρóς is the regular gloss1 on the waxy substance called μàλθα or μàλθα which was used in Athens—at the time of Sophocles himself2—particularly for spreading on wooden writing-tablets. It was surmised by Schwabe that μàλθη had been the word glossed in Ael. Dion.Two entries in Pollux are especially important for establishing the use ofmaltha. In 10. 58–9, describing it as ό ένών т πινακίδί κηρϳς, he quotes passages from Herodotus (7. 239), Cratinus (fr. 204), and Aristophanes (fr. 157) referring to the soft wax which could easily be scraped from writing-tablets to erase writing. In 8. 16 he says it is the wax spread on the dicasts’ πινáκιον тιμηтικóν, from scratching on which the ‘long line’ of condemnation it will be remembered that Athenian philheliasts got wax under their finger-nails (Ar. Vesp. 108 and schol.).