The prefaces of Cicero’s late dialogues indicate that they share a pedagogic function with the philosophical practices of the Hellenistic Academy. In the first part of this chapter, we give a few examples showing how the late dialogues serve this end, and use them to argue that Cicero’s texts systematically enact, as well as represent, an Academic pedagogical methodology. In the second part of the chapter, we use these results to propose that Cicero’s earlier, “Platonic,” dialogues are equally sophisticated in the modes through which they effect Academic aims concerning philosophical education. As starting points for further inquiry, we indicate a few of the devices the early dialogues employ to prompt the reader to reflect on her job as a philosophical critic.

In my own chapter, I discuss how Plath came into contact with the many common forms – literary and otherwise – in which we find the second person address. These include instructions such as user guides and recipes; questionnaires and interviews; advertising; letters; poems; and prose fiction. All of these second person functions are utilised by Plath at various points in her work. I provide key examples of these uses and establish the context for the kinds of sources she drew upon. Plath’s formulates a ‘you’ that is fluid and mobile, controlling the reader’s distance from and closeness to the narrators of her poems and fiction.