This chapter is devoted to the forms of public activation of poetry. Such poetic performances comprise the spectacular (and heavily attended) mode of public performance that marked the success of Modernista poet Amado Nervo, and, later, the declamaciones by Berta Singerman. The decline of this type of dramatic performance was followed by more intimate poetic activations that can be traced through the recordings of collections such as Voz Viva de México. Even this sotto voce reading – in which the music of the verse plays a central role –has been challenged more recently by poets attuned to spoken word and poetry slam practices, and who have garnered considerable and well-deserved attention, among them Rojo Córdova, José Eugenio Sánchez, and Rocío Cerón.

Over the course of his career Horace shows a variety of ways of referring to the way that readers are reacting to his work. In the Satires and Epistles he regularly makes references to his reception, but in the Epodes and Odes—following archaic and classical Greek precedent—he never does. The chapter argues that the main reason for these choices is that Horace was simultaneously keen to be famous and appalled at the idea of his poetry being vulgarised by a mass audience.

The chapter describes the minimalist nature of ancient punctuation, arguing that the absence of quotation marks in ancient texts is a more interesting phenomenon than usually thought. The chapter examines numerous cases where the absence of quotation marks makes it difficult for a reader to be initially sure where a speech begins or ends; it is argued that there is regularly a lot at stake for our interpretations in this uncertainty, since the reader must decide for themselves what the passage really means before deciding where the speeches begin and end.

Building on the previous chapter, the goal here is to summarize and explain to the reader the conventions followed by Byzantine illustrators when illuminating Gospel lectionaries, particularly focusing on initials, marginalia, and miniatures. The chapter explains how the formulaic opening lines of the Gospels were illustrated and what types of images were selected for the initials, all which stress the speech of Christ or the Evangelists. The chapter also articulates how these types of illustrations (initials, marginalia, and miniatures) operated differently from one another and were tasked with carrying different types of information for users. Defining the relatively strict and cohesive rules by which which scribes and illuminators played with the written text and images allows the reader to better appreciate diversions and exceptions that were complexly deployed to comment and reflect on the meaning of the text.

Moving from the specificities of the manuscript itself to the conditions of reading and recitation, this chapter looks at when and how the Gospel lectionary was used in the Divine Liturgy, while also investigating the cultural role and conception that the practice of reading held in the post-iconoclastic Byzantine world. This presents us with a survey of not only liturgical practices, but also how reading was understood as being a process of divine inspiration, akin to being possessed, which allowed the speakers in the text to be embodied through the reader. The chapter surveys not only the classical heritage of these ideas, but also contemporaneous descriptions of chanters and recitation competitions held in Constantinople, which allow us to understand the cultural importance and milieu under which these illuminated Gospel lectionaries were produced and used.