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CHAPTER 2 Dido as Libido From Augustine to Dante Sed quia legendi uerbum aequiuocum est, tarn ad docentis et discentis exercitium quam ad occupationem per se scrutantis scripturas, altemm, id est quod inter doctorem et discipulum communicatur, ut uerbo utamur Quintiliani dicatur praelectio. Alterum quod ad scrutinium meditantis accedit, lectio simpliciter appelletur.1 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 1.24 But because the word for reading (legendi,) refers as much to the exercise of the person teaching and the person learning as to the occupation of the person examining written texts in itself, the first, that which is shared between teacher and pupil, may be called—to use Quintilian's word—praelectio (lecture, a reading aloud). The other, which resembles the investigation of one studying, may simply be called lectio. A s part of his larger discussion of the aims and methods of education , John of Salisbury carefully delineates and then defines various modes of reading the Latin language in this passage. Reading (legere) may be either interactive or solitary, though solitary lectio was probably still a vocal and highly physical activity.2 Lectio performs a significant role in the formation of a textual community—one is able to practice lectio as an individual because one has been instructed by others and thereby initiated into a distinct community defined by the activityof readership. Such readership initially depends on the instruction of the doctor, yet it eventually empowers the discipulus to read individually, though even private study would still identify one with a larger community of readers. Throughout this treatise on education, John asserts the political and moral value of philosophical inquiry, which depends on lectio , doctiina, meditatio and assiduitas opens (1.23) (reading, instruction, contemplation, and practice). He emphatically describes reading as scrutiny: "Lectio uero scriptorum praeiacentem habet materiam" (1.23) (Reading in fact holds the written matter in front). He approvingly notes the strict discipline and corporal punishment required from the teacher as part of the overall training in grammar that forms the foundation of a learned man's ability to scrutinize ancient texts for their contribution to 74 Dido asLibido contemporary philosophical discussions; the propereducation is a critical requirement for the statesmen.3 John's discussion in the Metalogiconof the rudimentary training in grammar as part ofthe acquisition of the ability to read in Latin has its philosophical counterpart in the Policraticus,a text composed with the specific aim ofpolitical reform.4 This discussion of reading as a skill acquiredunder intense supervision in the context of the larger moral, political, and philosophical roles that await the learned reader allows us to glimpse the social and cultural forces that helped to shape the reading experience in the textual cultures from antiquity onward. The status ofthe Aeneid as a school text throughout the late antique and medieval period assured the circulation of the Virgilian Dido within such a structured regime of reading as disciplined scrutiny of written material. In the homosocial arrangement of medieval academic cultures, the written text of the Aeneid came under the scrutiny of schoolboys and learned men who participated in the academic dialogues recorded in centuries of glosses and allegories that testified to the canonicity of the Aeneid and assured its continued status as a master text. In such a scene of reading,Dido's pagan sexuality could be most easily recuperated as a figure of libido. From Augustine's experiences as a schoolboy who received a Roman education, through the comments of Servius and the allegorical readings of Fulgentius, Bernard Silvestris, and John of Salisbury, Latin readers of Aeneid 4—readers who are by definition the product of institutionalized educational practices—find the character of Dido most legible as a personification of desire. Dante's awareness of this tradition and his approachto Dido illustrate the extent to which learned readers of the Aeneid had come to identify Virgil's Dido with the seductive qualities of textuality. Augustine's Tears Augustine's description of his early education in the Confessions reads as a programmatic episode for the conflicts between between will and desire that structure the Confessions as a whole. In addition, his descriptionof his grammatical and literary training provides a paradigmatic outline of the larger issues involved in the curricular use of the Aeneid. In Confessions 1.13, Augustine recounts his first experiences as areader: Nam utique meliores, quia certiores erant primae illae litterae, quibus fiebat in me, et factum est, et habeo illud ut et legam si quid scriptum invenio, et scribam ipse si quid...

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