Surveillance et transgression sur la scène plautinienne

Abstract

This study investigates some of the ways in which surveillance turns into transgression in Plautus’s plays. Watching over someone (obseruatio, in the general sense) can take the form of close watch, spying, and voyeurism, and we try to identify where the transgression lies. As Plautus uses Roman social patterns to turn them into a comical game, the investigation shows how the playwright intertwines social aspects with comical poetics. Our starting point is indeed the situation of the slave Sceledrus in the Miles gloriosus, for which some critics have spoken of “transgression”, as “he saw what he should not see”. However, his position is ambiguous insofar as he did indeed receive a surveillance mission. As we examine Plautus’s plays, it appears that secrecy, with the ignorance that goes hand in hand, is the discriminating element between watch and spying. The speculator, the spy, observes the actions of another character unbeknownst to him. Yet it is this espionage that often highlights the transgression of the spied-on character, who commits a reprehensible or forbidden act. It is the case of some senes in particular, with their vice and decadence. When pleasure occurs in the process, we can speak to a certain extent of voyeurism. The ignorance, the limit and the intention of the beholder are therefore at the heart of the question of transgression. In this sense there is transgression in the case of the guardian of the Miles gloriosus only because the neighbour wants to defeat the guardian by accusing him of spying on his home. It is the trick employed by the neighbour and his sidekicks that transforms the legitimate «guardian» into a «transgressor». The real transgressor is the guarded figure, the courtesan, as are some senes in other Plautus’s plays.