Beyond Aristophanes

Beyond Aristophanes PDF Author: Gregory W. Dobrov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This collection of essays is devoted to the most important changes--in theme, language, structure, style, and production--that characterize the transformation of Athenian Comedy from the mid-fifth through the fourth century.

Beyond Aristophanes

Beyond Aristophanes PDF Author: Gregory W. Dobrov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This collection of essays is devoted to the most important changes--in theme, language, structure, style, and production--that characterize the transformation of Athenian Comedy from the mid-fifth through the fourth century.

The Political Theory of Aristophanes

The Political Theory of Aristophanes PDF Author: Jeremy J. Mhire
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438450052
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This original and wide-ranging collection of essays offers, for the first time, a comprehensive examination of the political dimensions of that madcap comic poet Aristophanes. Rejecting the claim that Aristophanes is little more than a mere comedian, the contributors to this fascinating volume demonstrate that Aristophanes deserves to be placed in the ranks of the greatest Greek political thinkers. As these essays reveal, all of Aristophanes' plays treat issues of fundamental political importance, from war and peace, poverty and wealth, the relation between the sexes, demagoguery and democracy to the role of philosophy and poetry in political society. Accessible to students as well as scholars, The Political Theory of Aristophanes can be utilized easily in the classroom, but at the same time serve as a valuable source for those conducting more advanced research. Whether the field is political philosophy, classical studies, history, or literary criticism, this work will make it necessary to reconceptualize how we understand this great Athenian poet and force us to recognize the political ramifications and underpinnings of his uproarious comedies.

Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres

Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres PDF Author: Charles Platter
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 080189333X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The comedies of Aristophanes are known not only for their boldly imaginative plots but for the ways in which they incorporate and orchestrate a wide variety of literary genres and speech styles. Unlike the writers of tragedy, who prefer a uniformly elevated tone, Aristophanes articulates his dramatic dialogue with striking literary and linguistic juxtapositions, producing a carnivalesque medley of genres that continually forces both audience and reader to readjust their perspectives. In this energetic and original study, Charles Platter interprets the complexities of Aristophanes' work through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical writing. This book charts a new course for Aristophanic comedy, taking its lead from the work of Bakhtin. Bakhtin describes the way multiple voices—vocabularies, tones, and styles of language originating in different social classes and contexts—appear and interact within literary texts. He argues that the dynamic quality of literature arises from the dialogic relations that exist among these voices. Although Bakhtin applied his theory primarily to the epic and the novel, Platter finds in his work profound implications for Aristophanic comedy, where stylistic heterogeneity is the genre's lifeblood.

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.

The Rivals of Aristophanes

The Rivals of Aristophanes PDF Author: David Harvey
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
The work of the 'other' comic poets of classical Athens, those who competed with, and in some cases defeated, their (eventually) better-known fellow comedian, Aristophanes, has almost eluded the historical record. The poetry of Cratinus, Phrynichos, Eupolis and the rest has survived only in tantalising, often tiny, fragments and citations. Modern studies in this field have themselves often been difficult of access. Here an exceptional cast of scholars, including most of the leading international authorities, provides a set of 28 interpretative essays to cover every one of these 'other' poets of Athenian Old Comedy for whom significant evidence survives. The work includes a comprehensive bibliography, and is a landmark in the study of Old Comedy.

Resistant Form: Aristophanes and the Comedy of Crisis

Resistant Form: Aristophanes and the Comedy of Crisis PDF Author: Mario Telò
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1685710883
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Can attending to poetic form help us imagine a radical politics and bridge the gap between pressing contemporary political concerns and an ancient literature that often seems steeped in dynamics of oppression? The corpus of the fifth-century Athenian playwright Aristophanes includes some of the funniest yet most disturbing comedies of Western literature. His work’s anarchic experimentation with language invites a radically “oversensitive” hyperformalism, a formalistic overanalysis that disrupts, disables, or even abolishes a range of normativities (government, labor, reproduction, gender). Exceeding not just historicist contextualism, but also conventional notions of laughter and the logic of the joke, Resistant Form: Aristophanes and the Comedy of Crisis uses Aristophanes to fully embrace, in the practice of close or “too-close” reading, the etymological and conceptual nexus of crisis, critique, and literary criticism. These exuberant readings of Birds, Frogs, Lysistrata, and Women at the Thesmophoria, together with the first attempt ever to grapple with the comic style of critical theorists Gilles Deleuze, Achille Mbembe, and Jack Halberstam, connect Aristophanes with contemporary discourses of biopolitics, necrocitizenship, care, labor, and transness, and at the same time disclose a quasi- or para-Aristophanic mode in the written textures of critical theory. Here is a radically new approach to the literary criticism of the pre-modern – one that materializes the circuit of crisis and critique through a restless inhabitation of the becomings and unbecomings of comic form.

Brill's Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy

Brill's Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy PDF Author: Gregory Dobrov
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004188843
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 595

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Book Description
The Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy sets forth the main resources for the advancing student in three sections: "Contexts,""History," and "Elements.” The volume is a guide for understanding and interpreting the classic comedies as well as for navigating the principal corpora of texts, fragments and scholia.

Aristophanes' Old-and-New Comedy

Aristophanes' Old-and-New Comedy PDF Author: Kenneth J. Reckford
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469639858
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
This startling and original study emerged from Kenneth Rockford's wish to vindicate Aristophanes' Clouds against detractors. As a result of years of rereading and teaching Aristophanes, he realized that the Clouds could not be defended in an analysis of that play in isolation. A better approach, he decided, would be to define a comic perspective within which Aristophanes' comedies in general as well as the Clouds in particular could be appreciated. This first volume of Reckford's defense examines the comedies as a whole in a series of defining essays, each with its own dominant concern and method of approach. The author begins by exploring not the usual questions of Aristophanes' political attitudes and his place in the development of comedy, but rather the festive, celebratory, and Dionysian nature of Old Comedy. Here and throughout the book Reckford illustrates Aristophanes' form of comedy with analogies to Rabelais, Shakespeare, Charlie Chaplin, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In the remaining essays Reckford goes beyond the usual Freudian approaches, reinterpreting the comic catharsis as a clarification of wishing and hoping. He also explores the growth of plays from comic idea to comic performance, in ways reflected in Tom Stoppard's plays today. Only then are Aristophanes' basic political loyalties described, as well as the place of his old- and-new comedy within the history of the genre. In a book that is as much about comedy generally as it is about Aristophanes specifically, some plays are treated more fully than others. Reckford discusses the Wasps at length, comparing the symbolic transformations and comic recognitions in the play with dream experience and dream interpretation. He also analyzes the Peace, the Acharians, the Birds, and the Frogs. Reckford's vindication of the Clouds will appear in the second volume of his defense, Clouds of Glory. Reckford's playful translations preserve the puns and anachronisms of Aristophanes, maintaining the playwright's comic feeling and tone. Combining traditional classical scholarship with a variety of literary, psychological, and anthropological approaches, he has written a study that will appeal to both the academic audience and the general reader who cares about comedy. Originally published in 1987. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Talking about Laughter

Talking about Laughter PDF Author: Alan H. Sommerstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199554196
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Fourteen studies, including some previously unpublished, by Alan Sommerstein on Aristophanes and his fellow dramatists. Each chapter deals with its own topic, but between them they build up a multifaceted picture of the dramatist, the genre, and its interactions with the society of classical Athens.

Aristophanes

Aristophanes PDF Author: James Robson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472519612
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This accessible introduction to the work of one of the world's greatest comic writers tackles key questions posed by Aristophanes' plays, such as staging, humour, songs, obscene language, politics and the modern translation and performance of Aristophanic comedy. The book opens up exciting and contentious areas of Aristophanic scholarship in a way that is engaging and readily comprehensible to a non-specialist audience, never losing sight of the fact that Aristophanes' plays are vibrant literary texts, designed primarily to appeal to a classical Athenian audience as pieces of living drama. Key to the book's appeal is that James Robson conceives of the plays as dynamic texts, containing a treasure trove of information not only about how they might have been performed and received in classical Athens, but also how they might be read and understood today. Most importantly, readers are given the tools and information to make their own minds up about the debates that still rage about Aristophanic comedy in the modern world.