Juegos de palabras en el Rudens de Plauto

Abstract

The aim of this study is twofold: on the one hand, it intends to show that, even in works considered as being of more serious content, the Sarsinate has always succeeded in resorting to the most hilarious comic devices, spccifically those based on verbal humour; on the other hand, it attempts to provide an ovcrview of the subject from a fresh standpoint, by giving a practical testimony that it is possible to study Classical texts by taking into account the most recent theories in linguistic pragmatics. In order to achieve these objectives, the author has set the theoretical prerises which guide his analysis (the inferential model, the theories of pertinence and the humour as the consequence of the surprising resolution of two contradictory implicatures, thus calling for a retroactive reinterpretation of the utterance) and, taking those into consideration, suggests a division of the puns and their study in Plautus's Rudens. Thanks to this method of analysis he has managed to track down possible puns in Plautus's text which have not been considered as such up to now.