"In this essay, Peter Kivy argues that there are distinct analogies between "silent" reading and performance. Readers have an "experience" when they read silently to themselves akin to the experience one would have had when the rhapsode recited Homer to the citizens of Plato's Athens. Kivy makes the case for a deeper understanding and appreciation of literary works by suggesting that readers are performers of the works they read, and their performances recitations to the "inner ear.""--Jacket.