Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy

Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy PDF Author: Donald Sells
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350060526
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This book argues that Old Comedy's parodic and non-parodic engagement with tragedy, satyr play, and contemporary lyric is geared to enhancing its own status as the preeminent discourse on Athenian art, politics and society. Donald Sells locates the enduring significance of parody in the specific cultural, social and political subtexts that often frame Old Comedy's bold experiments with other genres and drive its rapid evolution in the late fifth century. Close analysis of verbal, visual and narrative strategies reveals the importance of parody and literary appropriation to the particular cultural and political agendas of specific plays. This study's broader, more flexible definition of parody as a visual – not just verbal – and multi-coded performance represents an important new step in understanding a phenomenon whose richness and diversity exceeds the primarily textual and literary terms by which it is traditionally understood.

Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy

Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy PDF Author: Donald Sells
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350060526
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
This book argues that Old Comedy's parodic and non-parodic engagement with tragedy, satyr play, and contemporary lyric is geared to enhancing its own status as the preeminent discourse on Athenian art, politics and society. Donald Sells locates the enduring significance of parody in the specific cultural, social and political subtexts that often frame Old Comedy's bold experiments with other genres and drive its rapid evolution in the late fifth century. Close analysis of verbal, visual and narrative strategies reveals the importance of parody and literary appropriation to the particular cultural and political agendas of specific plays. This study's broader, more flexible definition of parody as a visual – not just verbal – and multi-coded performance represents an important new step in understanding a phenomenon whose richness and diversity exceeds the primarily textual and literary terms by which it is traditionally understood.

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy PDF Author: Martin Revermann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521760283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
This book provides a unique panorama of this challenging area of Greek literature, combining literary perspectives with historical issues and material culture.

Democratic Swarms

Democratic Swarms PDF Author: Page duBois
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226818284
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Considers how ancient Greek comedy offers a model for present-day politics. With Democratic Swarms, Page duBois revisits the role of Greek comedy in ancient politics, considering how it has been overlooked as a political medium by modern theorists and critics. Moving beyond the popular readings of ancient Greece through the lens of tragedy, she calls for a revitalized look at Greek comedy. Rather than revisiting the sufferings of Oedipus and his family or tragedy’s relationship to questions of sovereignty, this book calls for comedy—its laughter, its free speech, its wild swarming animal choruses, and its rebellious women—to inform another model of democracy. Ancient comedy has been underplayed in the study of Greek drama. Yet, with the irrepressible energy of the comic swarm, it provides a unique perspective on everyday life, gender and sexuality, and the utopian politics of the classical period of Athenian democracy. Using the concepts of swarm intelligence and nomadic theory, duBois augments tragic thought with the resistant, utopian, libidinous, and often joyous communal legacy of comedy, and she connects the lively anti-authoritarianism of the ancient comic chorus with the social justice movements of today.

Ancient Greek Comedy

Ancient Greek Comedy PDF Author: Almut Fries
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110646269
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
This volume, in honour of Angus M. Bowie, collects seventeen original essays on Greek comedy. Its contributors treat questions of origin, genre and artistic expression, interpret individual plays from different angles (literary, historical, performative) and cover aspects of reception from antiquity to the 20th century. Topics that have not received much attention so far, such as the prehistory of Doric comedy or music in Old Comedy, receive a prominent place. The essays are arranged in three sections: (1) Genre, (2) Texts and Contexts, (3) Reception. Within each section the chapters are as far as possible arranged in chronological order, according to historical time or to the (putative) dates of the plays under discussion. Thus readers will be able to construe their own diachronic and thematic connections, for example between the portrayal of stock characters in early Doric farce and developed Attic New Comedy or between different forms of comic reception in the fourth century BC. The book is intended for professional scholars, graduate and undergraduate students. Its wide range of subjects and approaches will appeal not only to those working on Greek comedy, but to anyone interested in Greek drama and its afterlife.

Jokes in Greek Comedy

Jokes in Greek Comedy PDF Author: Naomi Scott
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350248517
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
In ancient Greek comedy, nothing is ever 'just a joke'. This book treats jokes with the seriousness they deserve, and shows that far from being mere surface-level phenomena, jokes in Greek comedy are in fact a site of poetic experimentation whose creative force expressly rivals that of serious literature. Focusing on the fragments of authors including Cratinus, Pherecrates, and Archippus alongside the extant plays of Aristophanes, Naomi Scott argues that jokes are critical to comedy's engagement with the language and convention of poetic representation. More than this, she suggests that jokes and poetry share a kind of kinship as two modes of utterance which specifically set out to flout the rules of ordinary speech. Starting with bad puns, and taking in crude slapstick, vulgar innuendo and frivolous absurdism, Jokes in Greek Comedy demonstrates that the apparently inconsequential jokes which pepper the surface of Greek comedy in fact amplify the impossible and defamiliarizing qualities of standard poetic practice, and reveal the fundamental ridiculousness of treating make-believe as a serious endeavour. In this way, jokes form a central part of Greek comedy's contestation of the role of language, and particularly poetic language, in the truthful representation of reality.

Aristophanes the Democrat

Aristophanes the Democrat PDF Author: Keith Sidwell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521519985
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
This book argues that writers of Old Comedy belonged to recognisable political circles and used their comedy to disparage their political enemies.

The People of Aristophanes

The People of Aristophanes PDF Author: Victor Ehrenberg
Publisher: Oxford : B. Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Athens (Greece)
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description


Democratic Swarms

Democratic Swarms PDF Author: Page duBois
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226815757
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Considers how ancient Greek comedy offers a model for present-day politics. With Democratic Swarms, Page duBois revisits the role of Greek comedy in ancient politics, considering how it has been overlooked as a political medium by modern theorists and critics. Moving beyond the popular readings of ancient Greece through the lens of tragedy, she calls for a revitalized look at Greek comedy. Rather than revisiting the sufferings of Oedipus and his family or tragedy’s relationship to questions of sovereignty, this book calls for comedy—its laughter, its free speech, its wild swarming animal choruses, and its rebellious women—to inform another model of democracy. Ancient comedy has been underplayed in the study of Greek drama. Yet, with the irrepressible energy of the comic swarm, it provides a unique perspective on everyday life, gender and sexuality, and the utopian politics of the classical period of Athenian democracy. Using the concepts of swarm intelligence and nomadic theory, duBois augments tragic thought with the resistant, utopian, libidinous, and often joyous communal legacy of comedy, and she connects the lively anti-authoritarianism of the ancient comic chorus with the social justice movements of today.

Pericles on Stage

Pericles on Stage PDF Author: Michael Vickers
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292746571
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Since the eighteenth century, classical scholars have generally agreed that the Greek playwright Aristophanes did not as a matter of course write "political" plays. Yet, according to an anonymous Life of Aristophanes, when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to know about the government of Athens, Plato sent him a copy of Aristophanes' Clouds. In this boldly revisionist work, Michael Vickers convincingly argues that in his earlier plays, Aristophanes in fact commented on the day-to-day political concerns of Athenians. Vickers reads the first six of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays in a way that reveals the principal characters to be based in large part on Pericles and his ward Alcibiades. According to Vickers, the plays of Aristophanes—far from being nonpolitical—actually allow us to gauge the reaction of the Athenian public to the events that followed Pericles' death in 429 B.C., to the struggle for the political succession, and to the problems presented by Alcibiades' emergence as one of the most powerful figures in the state. This view of Aristophanes reaffirms the central role of allegory in his work and challenges all students of ancient Greece to rethink long-held assumptions about this important playwright.

A Companion to Aristophanes

A Companion to Aristophanes PDF Author: Matthew C. Farmer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119622956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
Provides a comprehensive and systematic treatment of the life and work of Aristophanes A Companion to Aristophanes provides an invaluable set of foundational resources for undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars alike. More than a basic reference text, this innovative volume situates each of Aristophanes' surviving plays within discussion of key themes relevant to the study of the Aristophanic corpus. Throughout the Companion, an international panel of contributors incorporates material culture and performance context, offers methodological and theoretical insights into the study of Aristophanes, demonstrates the relevance of Aristophanes to modern life, and more. Each chapter focused on a particular play is paired with a theme that is exemplified by that play, such as gender, sexuality, religion, ritual, and satire. With an emphasis on understanding Greek comedy and its ancient Athenian context, the text includes approaches to Aristophanes through criticism, performance, translation, and teaching to encourage and inform future work on Greek comedy. Illustrating the vitality of contemporary engagement with one of the world's great literary figures, this comprehensive volume: Helps new readers and teachers of Aristophanes appreciate the broader importance of each play within the study of antiquity Offers sophisticated analyses of the Aristophanic corpus and its place in literary and cultural history Includes chapters focused on teaching Aristophanes, including one emphasizing performance Provides detailed syllabi and lesson plans for integrating the material into high school and college curricula A Companion to Aristophanes is an essential resource for advanced students and instructors in Classics, Ancient Literature, Comparative Literature, and Ancient Drama and Theater. It is also a must-have reference for academic scholars, university libraries, non-specialist Classicists and other literary critics researching ancient drama, and sophisticated general readers interested in Aristophanes, Greek drama, classical Athens, or the ancient Mediterranean world.