Lecture by Christopher Londa (Johns Hopkins University). Gilman 108

Reading with their ears,” the aristocratic elite of ancient Rome often enjoyed literature by listening to enslaved lectors perform texts out loud. But how did the lectors themselves think about these performances? On this question, the archive plays broken records. We hear elites complain about work-stoppages; the perspectives of enslaved reader-performers rarely survive. To map the shape of this absence, the present paper experiments with a comparative methodology, taking an example of recent dystopian fiction as a heuristic for formulating questions about the world of enslaved readers “off-book” and “behind the scenes.” The work in question is George Saunders’ “Liberation Day” (2023). The short story relays the inner monologue of Jeremy, one of an immobilized and cognitively-modified group of “Speakers,” whose voices are programmed for performance by the household’s patriarch. In comparing Saunders’ representation of the “Speaking Wall” with enslaved literary performance in ancient Rome, the paper traces a selection of anarchival feelings and tensions that flesh out the experience of reading “from below.