Erasmus and the Colloquial Emotions

Cognitive philosophy in recent years has made conversation central to the experience of emotion: we recognise emotions in dialogue.What lesson can be drawn from this for understanding Erasmus’ Colloquies ? This work has often been rifled for its treatment of ideas and opinions, but it also offers a complex and highly imaginative treatment of conversation, originating as rhetorical exercises in De copia . This essay reconfigures the Colloquies in such terms, especially those involving female interlocutors, drawing on the riches of ancient interest in conversation in Plato, Cicero and Quintilian, and also on the vogue for dialogue in Renaissance Italy from Leonardo Bruni to Castiglione.

should be easy and not in the least dogmatic; it should have the spice of wit. And the one who engages in conversation should not debar others from participating in it, as if he were entering upon a private monopoly; but, as in other things, so in a general conversation (in sermone communi) he should think it not unfair for each to have his turn.
For Montaigne in particular, as for the sixteenth century in general, and for some time after, 'l'art de conferer' was embodied in the Familiaria Colloquia of Erasmus. This was first published in November 1518, by Johannes Froben, in an unauthorized octavo of eighty pages, of about a dozen exercises in polite conversation.4 In March 1519, Erasmus consented to a revised version by Dirk Martens. By March 1522, as it found definitive form, the book had been reissued around thirty times, in copies printed in Paris, Leipzig, Antwerp, Vienna, Kraków, Mainz, Augsburg, Cologne, and Strasbourg, as well as Basel and Louvain.5 The number of the colloquies, and the work's ambition, grew and grew Erasmus Studies 40 (2020) 127-150 until the edition by Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius in 1533.6 By now a full-scale book of dialogues, this edition formed the basis for the posthumous Opera omnia, comprising sixty-one model cases of human interaction in speech.
In the prefatory letter to the March 1519 edition, Erasmus describes the work as consisting of 'phrases useful in daily intercourse and … conversation over the dinner-table ' .7 Yet in his apology 'To the reader' dated 21 May 1526, appended to most editions as a short treatise, De utilitate colloquiorum, Erasmus says little about the art of conversation, either in theory or practice. Instead, pursued by 'slander' , he regrets how these days 'it is not safe to publish any book except under armed guard' .8 Conversation, it seems, follows its own law of entropy, and by now (as in many matters), Erasmus associated it with the controversies and reprehensions the colloquies had subsequently run into. This reflects the turbulence of the times, and especially of the Luther affair. The faculty of theology in Paris in 1526 identified 69 passages in the book which were subject to error or liable to corrupt the young, and in 1528 the faculties of arts, canon law and medicine lumbered in.9 Erasmus' statements on monks, on pilgrimages, or celibacy, or fasting, exposed him to censure: but also, perhaps, the style of the work itself caused trouble, moulded on Horace's Satires, and conceived (as he remarked in 1519) as 'gossip by the fireside after supper' . The book reflects what we feel in 'our off moments, in our cups, in love, or in anger' .10 Conversation is always like that. Whatever we meant to say, however we understood each other while we were speaking, may be overtaken by mutual misunderstanding. This is, perhaps, an allegory for the intersubjective experience of emotion. Miscommunication, upset, or anxiety, are as much a part of the history of emotion as communication, sympathy, or harmony. 'Our feelings belong to one world' , says Proust; 'our ability to name things and our thoughts to another; we can establish a concordance between the two, but not bridge the gap ' .11 This, indeed, has been the philosophical justification for the dialogue form since ancient times. Socrates uses the dialectic of conversation to enable us to pursue truth, winnowing off false opinions or glib insights on the way. Some 6 asd i-3: 771-774 conveniently sets out the progress in contents of the early editions. 7 Ep. 909 cwe lines 14-15. We could call this talk for the sake of talking. This throws open the nature of the Colloquies to further discussion. One model for dialogue, favoured by Montaigne, is progress through disagreement. This happens a lot in Plato. Opinions differ, but we find the right one by listening to the opposite. An alternative view is that conversation itself constructs a model for agreement. The interesting point is that both models rely on a theory of emotion. Argument is not just about a rational procedure; it is also about changing people's feelings. Aristotle made this the foundation of his Rhetoric. An orator needs to persuade people, and so he needs (it is always 'he' in Aristotle) to understand emotions, both his own and those of his listeners.28 Encountering difference arouses antipathy; soliciting agreement entails sympathy. Modern cognitive science suggests a parallel pattern, mining dialogue analysis to detect emotional content. Indeed, dialogue has come to be a model not just for agreement, but for the successful management of emotions altogether. Let's talk, we say. Only through talk are emotions understood, or perhaps even are comprehensible. This is called 'emotional recognition' , or erc: emotion recognition in conversation. 29 While Aristotle's Rhetoric came back to the fore only in the generation after Erasmus, in the work of Francesco Robortello, he could have found a similar intuition in Quintilian. In his discussion of figures as arguments, Quintilian says that they have to be based on agreeable and 'credible' emotions.30 Con- What matters is not whether this is 'really' Cornelis Gerard, one of his oldest correspondents (from his time in the cloister at Steyn), but how Erasmus makes him talk. Not all of Erasmus' speakers are very good at it. They are churlish, or short of words, or short of feelings. Others, though, many of them women, are emotionally self-knowing. Some, who understand the emotions of others, are not very good at their own, especially in the heat of the moment. What matters, finally, is not what they individually say, but what comes out in their colloquium, the coming together of their conversation. We might call this, or the work itself, a talking cure.

Rhetoric and Conversation
Rhetoric is the art of speaking as well as writing well. This is what makes it so general a form of enquiry: it covers, Peter Mack observes, 'the use of voice and gesture, the ways to discover and present arguments, the arousal of emotions, self-presentation, selections of vocabulary, the organization of a speech, At some level, Erasmus seems to have conceived of these two works as parallel elementary texts in speaking and writing well. There is some cross-over of material in early editions.43 In any case, the description of the colloquies as formulae of conversation, 'everyday' or 'familiar' , is retained from 1518 to 1522. He begins, indeed, with a formula for meeting: 'Greetings, father'; 'dear little mother'; 'my brother' .44 A colloquium in Cicero is not a natural conversation, but a performance in imitation of the natural. Mark Antony is described in a letter to Atticus (written just after the assassination of Caesar) as making a colloquium cum heroibus Of course, the printed version is an imitation rather than the real thing: it is a written representation of speech, but it harks back to the oratorical nature of rhetorical training. Sermo is the ordinary Latin word for any kind of talk or speaking; however, it also covers literary conversation or discussion (similar to oratio). It can thus be high or low; it can refer to a particular form of style, expression, or diction; it can mean the language of a nation, but it can also refer to a single 'word' . Indeed, the most famous instance of it in Erasmus, and the cause of much controversy, is when he uses it in the 1519 Novum testamentum to translate (in place of Jerome's verbum) the first verse of the gospel of John: In principio erat sermo ('In the beginning was the word').47 Sermo is also a familiar, but complex, word in literary theory. The pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, the oldest surviving Latin rhetorical treatise, divides out three kinds of sermo (or 'tones of voice') to learn: first, speaking with dignity, 'with the calmest and most subdued voice possible'; second, a 'demonstrative' style, with 'a rather thin-toned voice, and frequent pauses and intermissions' , designed to implant in the hearer's mind the points we are making; lastly, a 'narrative' tone, in which 'we seem to recount everything just as it took place' .48 This will require rapid and vigorous intonation in some cases, slower and leisurely in others. Even on such simple lines, sermo has to accommodate further modulations: 'sharpness' , 'kindness' , 'sadness' , or 'gaiety' . Adjustment needs to be made to the emotion of the occasion; or alternatively, to variations of jest: 'shifting utterance smoothly' , from the serious to 'facetious' , with the hint of a smile, yet no laugh.
Sermo is a still subtler concept in Cicero's authentic method. In the Orator, it is equivalent to an authorial style, such as when he praises Xenophon, cuius sermo est ille quidem melle dulcior, a voice sweeter than honey, one quite removed from the wrangling of the forum.49 It can mean a person's distinctive mode of voice, as when Cicero in Brutus praises Laelia, the daughter of Gaius, 45 Cicero, Ep. xiv.6.1. 46 Cicero, Philippics, 12. for her careful usage (elegantia).50 In Brutus, it is also used as a synonym for a dialogue, or to refer to discussion in the senate.51 In the dialogue between Laelius and his sons-in-law, De amicitia, Cicero chooses sermo as a term to reflect an author's intention in rendering character, 'to create the impression that they are present and speaking in person' .52 It is a commitment of living speech to memory, so that the actors are on stage before us. Its presence, in a crucial context in this work on friendship, demonstrates that for Cicero, sermo is associated with the representation of feeling as much as literary theory; indeed, the two are hardly distinguishable. By rendering these speech acts, Cicero aspires that the reader will believe that Laelius himself is talking. Dialogue thus acts as a mimetic performance of friendship in action, so that 'as you read it you will recognize in it a portrait of yourself' .53 Sermo is the rhetorical performance of self, of emotion, of intersubjectivity. From one of Erasmus' earliest letters, to his brother Pieter in 1487, sermo describes the familiar talk of friends. It is the language Erasmus shares with his beloved Servatius, when they talk about Pieter together; it is equivalent to a person's thought-processes or even his dreams. Friendship and intimacy are synonymous with it, as is summed up in the word familiares. This is the word Erasmus uses in the title of the Colloquies, of course; it is the word Cicero used for his 'familiar letters' to his friends (as did Petrarch, in turn).54 The connection Erasmus makes between familiar speech and friendship could hardly be better expressed than in Cicero's letter to Volumnius Eutrapelus in February or March 50 bce: iucundus est mihi sermo litterarum tuarum.55 'I enjoy the way your letters talk.' He might have mistaken the letter, addressed without a first name, for one by the senator Volumnius, but something in the way that it is written reveals his friend's voice. The give-away is expressed by Cicero in a joke in Greek, εὐτραπελία, which means 'cultured insolence' , or outrageous wit; this is his friend's eponymous cognomen. Erasmus, who calls himself Desiderius, knows the trick well. Indeed, he includes a Eutrapelus in two of his colloquies, as well as various avatars of himself.56 Our words are as expressive of us as our appearance or our very names. 50 Cicero The place where these matters are discussed in formal rhetoric is in relation to prosopopoeia. These are called by Quintilian fictiones personarum, which are used to display the inner thoughts of opponents; to introduce conversations between ourselves and others; or 'to provide appropriate characters for words of advice, reproach, complaint, praise, or pity' .57 Some rhetoricians, he says, distinguish prosopopoeia (where both speech and person are invented) from sermocinatio, or διάλογος (in the Greek nomenclature), which consists of imaginary conversations between historical characters. Quintilian rejects the distinction on extremely interesting grounds: 'for we cannot of course imagine a speech except as the speech of a person' . Impersonation is an inevitable sideproduct of speech-making. It can, of course, be done badly rather than well, yet creating acts of speaking always conveys the imitation of a person as well as a meaning or an idea. This is clearly a principle which Erasmus takes to heart in the Colloquies. He deals with the theory in Book ii of De copia, where he defines prosopopoeia as proxima personarum descriptio ('the realistic presentation of persons').58 As well as stock delineations of stereotypes and generic emotions, Erasmus here takes the time to admire more complex delineations of character such as in Lucian's Hippias. He also strays into drama, especially several plays by Terence. Who could be more dissimilar, he asks, than Demea and Micio in Adelphi, the two old brothers who educate their children in such contrasting ways? 'Micio is mild even when he is trying to reprimand his son severely, Demea is cross-patched even when he is doing his best to be pleasant.'59 Unlike Quintilian, Erasmus reserves a different term ('prosopography') for delineating historical characters. The highest form, he says, is dialogue itself: 'in which we supply each person with utterances appropriate to his age, type, country, way of life, cast of mind, and character' .60

Dialogue and Emotion
The humanist revival of ancient dialogue began in Italy in around 1400. Bracciolini's Facetiae, in which the conversation of learned men is exposed to analysis, ridicule, and sometimes scandal.
In the early sixteenth century, Italian style in the Ciceronian dialogue tended towards the didactic.65 Everything changed with Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (1528). While formally Ciceronian (modelled on De oratore), Castiglione's characters aspire to a courtly virtue and grace quite removed from the antique Roman urban constitution. The highest rhetorical art of the courtier is sprezzatura, nonchalance and effortlessness.66 While most of Erasmus' colloquies were written in the same decade as Castiglione, they have almost nothing in common. Instead they hark back to the humanist quattrocento style of Leon Battista Alberti. Della famiglia, written in the vernacular, uses dialogue in the moulding of virtuous character; but Momus (c. 1450) is more varied, at times melancholic or pessimistic in mood. It follows the Lucianic mode in using the Homeric gods to provide models for human emotion.67 In this way Momus shows a mixed attitude to human character, on display even more in the earlier Intercenales (1439), ten books of dialogue in conscious imitation of Erasmus Studies 40 (2020) 127-150 Lucian. These 'dinner pieces' (to use Marsh's translation) are personal as well as satirical.68 'The Orphan' deals with family litigation over inheritance; in 'The Love Affair' , a mother and daughter drive a young man to despair. In 'The Husband' , a virtuous husband punishes his unfaithful wife by gaslighting her with silent shows of tolerance. In leading her to her death, the dialogue concludes opaquely, the husband 'combined severity with supreme indulgence' , a form of black irony into which Alberti's authorial persona completely disappears.69 Erasmus takes this mode further by removing any kind of narratorial intervention. Characters speak for themselves, respond as themselves, and the reader has to take them at their word. Dialogue, that is, becomes the sole medium through which emotion is interpretable, as in a play, although here outside drama. The section on emotion at the conclusion of De copia explains how this happens. Any kind of argument, any kind of literature, even the exposition of facts, can be enhanced by sermocinatio ('dialogue'), 'in which we assign suitable utterances to one or more persons' .70 Erasmus cites a series of examples from the Iliad, in which Homer demonstrates wonderful skill in delineating 'what is appropriate to each character' through speech. Historians do this frequently, and even Christian writers on occasion.71 An extended form may be called epidiegesis, a term Erasmus uses rather differently from the rhetorical tradition, to mean an expanded or repeated or digressive narration, 'done to rouse indignation or sympathy' . The reason for doing this, Erasmus says, is that 'different people are affected by different things' (quod alios alia mouent). 72 We could add that people feel different things in the same circumstances.
Erasmus' exposition of the experience of emotion, like many of the best passages in De copia, itself comes upon us as a surprise aperçu, a thought or remark in passing. This ushers forth a copious flow of examples of 'warmth of emotion' from Cicero's Pro Milone, which Cicero mixes in via conversational example (deinde miscet affectus). Plato in The Republic is also apt in it, Erasmus maintains, especially when he wants to get something across which a reader might be reluctant to accept. This is the special skill of writers, who ' In what is by any standard a remarkable piece of literary criticism, Erasmus adds an extraordinary addendum that the 'emotions of comedy' (affectus comicos) are often interspersed into the Iliad and into Greek tragedy as well, although this is less often the case in Roman tragedy. We must, he says, include pleasure in a theory of the emotions (Inter affectus autem ponenda delectatio). To show what he means he makes an extended analysis of the passage in Iliad 6 when Hector departs for battle at the gates of Troy.77 Andromache carries in her arms their infant son; Hector smiles without saying anything; Andromache stands close to him, puts out her right hand, and calls him by name. They mouth something to each other, but the boy Astyanax is terrified by his father's armour. Father and mother both laugh; Hector takes off his helmet, puts it on the ground, and kisses the child. No one can get enough of Homer in this mood, Erasmus says, showing his own delight in reading as he retells. He confirms via Horace: thus 'characters seem real' (morata recte).78 While this is an idiosyncratic reading of ἤθη in Aristotle, it can be made sense of, if we think of Erasmus as using it to define habitual behaviour rather than extraordinary. This is, we might say, following Michel de Certeau, 'the practice of everyday life' .79 It is backed up by the account of ethos in Quintilian, which Erasmus surely has specifically in mind. This is feeling which is 'not only mild and calm, but usually attractive and polite, and pleasing and delightful to the The outward subject for the colloquy is Pamphagus' need for a benefice to keep him in money. 'A monkey without a tail is a priest without a benefice' was a Franciscan period joke.81 However, much of the conversation in Erasmus is taken up with Cocles' jokes about Pamphagus' huge nose.82 It could be used to extinguish a lamp; to collect things out of holes; as a peg, as a bellows, as a shade from the sun, or as a shield in battle. Pamphagus is remarkably forebearing at the onslaught: 'Lucky me!' , he says, when he might be excused for losing patience at what is presumably a sore point as well as a very old gag.83 The priest and his old drinking companion get along fine. Indeed, Pamphagus can laugh at himself as well as give back in kind. Nihil est nisi nasus, he replies at one point; you're all wit/nose.84 They banter about priests and sex just as easily. Right at the end of the exchange, however, they share some thoughts on humour itself. Ludus in seria, says Cocles. 'You take a serious matter lightly' , Thompson translates. We are into the heart of Erasmian territory, and the thought could as easily be reversed. Yet what is also at stake suddenly is how the two friends think about each other. Are the jokes beginning to hurt? pamphagus: You mock me and make fun of me. You treat me jokingly in a matter that's not funny at all. cocles: I'm not laughing at you; I'm telling the simple truth. I don't joke; I'm telling you straight. I speak seriously, sincerely, plainly. I'm telling the truth. Pamphagus manages to relax and take it all in good sport. Cocles will never stop playing the clown, Pamphagus says, and so he will not believe a word he says, in return. They break off.
We could call the moment metacolloquial. We are hardly going to trust Erasmus when he has someone say: Serio loquor. Ex animo loquor. Simpliciter loquor. Vera loquor. You must be kidding. Yet the passage also provides a commentary on the section on emotion at the end of De copia. It is a reminder that Erasmus, for all his love of Euripides, makes all his own personal literary ventures in comedy. He seeks, in Quintilian's phrase, to write in a way that is amabile et iucundum.85 It is worth remembering, too, that the passage on ethos in Quintilian precedes the one on laughter.86 Comedy is the art of the everyday. Yet literary theory has often been very poor at understanding the significance of this, or at having anything moderately interesting to say about comedy. Freud, some say, is an exception, and he certainly is one of the few writers who has tried to understand the quick passage of feeling shown between Pamphagus and Cocles here, between hostility and amiability.87 Yet comedy in the Colloquies should not be equated, as it sometimes is, with satire. Quam impia, quam spurca, quam pestifera scripsit Pogius?88 So Erasmus wrote of Poggio's irreverent Facetiae in the letter to Dorp. Erasmus is interested as much in a different kind of comedy, such as is evident in the quick slippage of emotion in conversational exchange. Pamphagus and Cocles understand each other intuitively, but that does not mean they are incapable of hurting each other. Emotion, it turns out, is all about communication, but also about a lack of it.

Emotional Recognition in Erasmian Dialogue
Of the upwards of one hundred and twenty interlocutors in the Familiaria Colloquia, a dozen are women. The figure is not so remarkable, perhaps, until we realise that in the whole classical tradition of dialogue, the only women characters are Diotima in the Symposium, whose speech is merely reported, and Lucian's Dialogues of Courtesans. Virginia Cox has outlined in detail how the incorporation of female speakers alongside male is one of the 'great novelties' Even in his declamation Encomium matrimonii (1518), Erasmus disclaimed responsibility for any views contained within.95 Rather than looking for an argument about marriage which Erasmus is trying to inculcate, Reinier Leushuis suggests, we should see in the colloquies a 'mimetic' function, in which the reader is brought to a matrimonial ideal based on intimacy and dialogue.96 Here I am interested not so much in marriage per se, as in a model of intimacy expressed in dialogue itself. This is not so much representative as constitutive. For, as cognitive philosophy has been arguing for a while, conversation is not a mimetic processing of emotions first experienced elsewhere, but the place where emotion takes place. Several kinds of metanarrative thus emerge within a colloquy, such as: how far the fictional characters have become people we believe in, or who believe in themselves, or in each other? In so far as we are concerned with argument, it is also about how to make arguments, or even what an argument is. All of this is part of the talking cure.
In the case of the marriage colloquies, there is also an element of sexual play involved in the argument. Proci et puellae is usually translated as 'Courtship' , which does not quite capture the frisson, in the Latin, of 'wooers and girls' . Pamphilus discusses with Maria the ethics of sex and marriage; but Pamphilus is also evidently in love with Maria. Maria, in turn, while not returning the favour, enjoys flirting with him. Debating about love is a proxy form of sexual tension, in which argument creates its own frictional excitement, in the way Freud describes so well in his discussion of double entendre.97 This indeed is how the dialogue opens, with a play on Maria's own name, as a servant of Mars, the god of war. You're killing me, says Pamphilus, with the usual sexual association. Maria replies with her own form of blood sport: Her questions show that she knows her theory of the soul, or of accidents or properties, but she also insists on tormenting Pamphilus ('Why do you sigh? Speak freely'), while also teasing him to death with statements of the obvious ('Well, I'm a girl, not a stone'), which are yet reminders of the flesh. In the best tradition of erotic arguments set in schoolrooms, every reference to the body is a return of the repressed, even as the hapless lover tries to keep his mind on higher things. It could be Maria versus Malvolio; indeed, it is perfectly plausible that Shakespeare read this colloquy in Nicholas Leigh's translation, A modest meane to mariage (London, 1568). What does speaking say? There is more to words, as J.L. Austin's theory of speech acts proclaims, than content alone, such as: 'the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement' .101 Pamphilus and Maria yearn for satisfactory agreement in more ways than one. Like at the end of a Shakespeare comedy, Maria's final words are a put-down, or at least they play for time. She will not marry him yet-it is traditional after all, Erasmus Studies 40 (2020) 127-150 Erasmus' Philodoxus ('The Lover of Glory'), probes the experience of emotions in plays. Erasmus makes the eponymous interlocutor Philodoxus confess: philodoxus: Non sum Stoicus ἀπαθής: tangor humanis affectibus.106 'I'm not a dispassionate Stoic, I am subject to human feelings.' Yet how to read his own feelings, never mind those of others? The case of Demea in Adelphi, says his friend Symbulus, shows how changeable emotions are. Everyone is different: est singulis in vno quoque genere peculiare quoddam ingenium ('each individual in any one group has some particular characteristic').107 So, do you want me to act like the changeable polypum, asks Philodoxus, ever aware of his honour? In Adagia, this is indeed Erasmus' recommendation: human nature should be adaptable, like the octopus that changes colour according to habitat. 108 We remain true to ourselves, while accommodating ourselves to every new circumstance. This is what it means to be subject to humanis affectibus.
Reading emotions, according to Erasmus, is precisely the art of rhetoric. As Cicero remarks in Brutus: 'what skill the orator has in playing on the minds of his audience is recognized by the emotion produced' . 109 The intelligence of emotions is immediate, like the sound made by the harp when the string is struck. A good critic can tell a good orator via a single glance, without even hearing a word. Indeed, in 'A Feast of Many Courses' , Erasmus describes how emotions can be read without words, through mime or gesture. A woman easily knows what her husband is feeling, without asking.110 In Amicitia ('Friendship'), the 'sympathy' between Sir Thomas More and his monkey is recounted, proving that animals, too, feel emotions. In the meadow or in the stable, a horse will seek out always the same companion, when it has nothing to do with sex.111 Many theories of emotion and language, like other theories of language, are based on a model of communication.112 I have a feeling, which I try to communicate in words, perhaps in direct response to your entreaty: 'Tell me what you are feeling' . Yet we are also familiar with situations in which words, more than anything, are awkward to find in relation to the complexity of emotion. Perhaps this is especially true of difficult or negative or conflicted emotions.
Erasmus Studies 40 (2020) 127-150 Martha Nussbaum argues in Anger and Forgiveness that intimate relationships are pivotal in this, because of 'people's sense of what it is for their lives to go well' .113 The desire to talk may exceed the ability (I only know that I am feeling something strongly, not what I am feeling precisely). It is also commonplace to say that it is only in the act of talking that we come to know what we feel. In that sense, language is a premonition of feeling, or at least the understanding of feeling: it does not yet have something to communicate. Anger, upset, or distress, inhibits self-knowledge.
Erasmus is more sensitive to these areas than we might think. He explicitly discusses tragedy in De copia as the place where emotions that are vehementiores (like anger or resentment) are on display. Yet he also suggests that everyday emotions (moderatiores) also need careful handling and nurturing. To this end, in the Colloquies, he often chooses his interlocutors precisely because they are not alike, or do not agree, or are actively in conflict with each other. Presentation of emotion in philosophical discussion often assumes self-knowledge. Yet not everyone is as self-knowing as Maria in Proci et puellae. Catarina, in 'The Girl with No Interest in Marriage' , argues against sex, but she does so without understanding what sex is. Xanthippe in Coniugum ('Marriage') is not as intelligent as Maria, but she is clearly smarter than her husband. Fabulla in Puerpera ('The New Mother') perhaps shows a different trait, so that even in arguing difficult philosophical problems (freedom and divine justice), emotional intelligence outwits rational knowledge. Eutrapelus, that inveterate mansplainerhis name synonymous with wit-cannot see it for the life of him.
Women are often said to be better at handling emotions, as also at talking about them, than men. Perhaps Erasmus agrees, but if so, he also knows that most conversations inevitably take place between people of unequal emotional intelligence. In these situations, it is as hard to be the person who is expected to be good at talking, as the one who is not. Perhaps there is no better example of this in Erasmus than Magdalia's encounter with Antronius in Abbatis et eruditae ('The Abbot and the Learned Woman'). If Magdalia is often associated with More's daughter, Margaret Roper, Antronius has a lower reputation. Antronius asinus was proverbial for someone exceptionally gross and stupid.114 He is a fat abbot, not much of an academic. Editors, academics themselves, assume that we are not supposed to like him. Yet it is not so clear that Magdalia is in such company. Antronius plays, perhaps, at being a fun-loving Philistine; while Magdalia plays at being his Socrates, bringing him up to scratch. Yet in this supposed Erasmus Studies 40 (2020) 127-150 dialogue of the deaf, between an unmarried man and a married woman, one cloistered and the other not, there is nonetheless an unconscious rapport, so that they can virtually finish each other's thoughts. It is a miraculous example of Erasmus' facility for dialogue in action, grounded in the stylistic device of stichomythia, much used by his beloved Euripides, yet here in virtuoso pairs or trios of words: antronius: I haven't the leisure. magdalia: How come? antronius: Because I've no free time. magdalia: No free time to grow wise? antronius: No. magdalia: What hinders you?115 Magdalia tries to persuade Antronius of her own love for books; Antronius replies that books drive him mad. What book-lover would not agree, to a point? He prefers his wine, but while Magdalia loves to scold him about that, it is not clear that she dislikes him, quite the contrary. The apparent empathy between these unlike souls is captured beautifully by an elegant example of Erasmian use of figures of speech. Magdalia employs the device of interruptio on Antronius: antronius: If wisdom came without hard workmagdalia: But man gets nothing in this life without hard work.116 Aposiopesis in Rhetorica ad Herennium is defined as 'to begin to say something and then stop short' .117 It is a form of emphasis, by leaving something obvious unsaid. Quintilian reserves it for an 'interruption' proper (citing Cicero's term, reticentia) in order to show emotion, especially anger or anxiety.118 Yet Magdalia employs it instead to show understanding in the very moment of recognition. She finishes Antronius' sentence for him, although not quite in the way that he wanted. She understands him, we could say, better than he does himself. On the same page she then interrupts herself, yet not out of exasperation, or even in Ciceronian 'reticence' , but because her thought is catching up with her own feeling. Conversation is like that in Erasmus. It is a way of reconciling tensions,