Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes

Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes PDF Author: James Robson
Publisher: Gunter Narr Verlag
ISBN: 9783823362203
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description

Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes

Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes PDF Author: James Robson
Publisher: Gunter Narr Verlag
ISBN: 9783823362203
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description


Aristophanes: Four Plays: Clouds, Birds, Lysistrata, Women of the Assembly

Aristophanes: Four Plays: Clouds, Birds, Lysistrata, Women of the Assembly PDF Author: Aristophanes
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631496336
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Capturing the antic outrageousness and lyrical brilliance of antiquity’s greatest comedies, Aaron Poochigian’s Aristophanes: Four Plays brings these classic dramas to vivid life for a twenty-first century audience. The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed a freedom of speech as broad as our own. This freedom, parrhesia, the right to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom, had no more fervent champion than the brilliant fifth-century comic playwright Aristophanes. His plays, immensely popular with the Athenian public, were frequently crude, even obscene. He ridiculed the great and the good of the city, showing up their hypocrisy and arrogance in ways that went far beyond the standards of good taste, securing the ire (and sometimes the retaliation) of his powerful targets. He showed his contemporaries, and he teaches us now, that when those in power act obscenely, patriotic obscenity is a fitting response. Aristophanes’s satirical masterpieces were also surpassingly virtuosic works of poetry. The metrical variety of his plays has always thrilled readers who can access the original Greek, but until now, English translations have failed to capture their lyrical genius. Aaron Poochigian, the first poet-classicist to tackle these plays in a generation, brings back to life four of Aristophanes’s most entertaining, wickedly crude, and frequently beautiful lyric comedies—the pinnacle of his comic art: · Clouds, a play famous for its caricature of antiquity’s greatest philosopher, Socrates; · Lysistrata, in which a woman convinces her female compatriots to withhold sex from their warmongering lovers unless they negotiate peace; · Birds, in which feathered creatures build a great city and become like gods; · and Women of the Assembly, Aristophones’s most revolutionary play, which inverts the norms of gender and power. Poochigian’s new rendering of these comic masterpieces finally gives contemporary readers a sense of the subversive pleasure Aristophones’s original audiences felt when they were first performed on the Athenian stage.

Aristophanes

Aristophanes PDF Author: James Robson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472519620
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.

Aristophanic Humour

Aristophanic Humour PDF Author: Peter Swallow
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350101532
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This volume sets out to discuss a crucial question for ancient comedy – what makes Aristophanes funny? Too often Aristophanes' humour is taken for granted as merely a tool for the delivery of political and social commentary. But Greek Old Comedy was above all else designed to amuse people, to win the dramatic competition by making the audience laugh the hardest. Any discussion of Aristophanes therefore needs to take into account the ways in which his humour actually works. This question is addressed in two ways. The first half of the volume offers an in-depth discussion of humour theory – a field heretofore largely overlooked by classicists and Aristophanists – examining various theoretical models within the specific context of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays. In the second half, contributors explore Aristophanic humour more practically, examining how specific linguistic techniques and performative choices affect the reception of humour, and exploring the range of subjects Aristophanes tackles as vectors for his comedy. A focus on performance shapes the narrative, since humour lives or dies on the stage – it is never wholly comprehensible on the page alone.

Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour

Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour PDF Author: Alexandre G. Mitchell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521513707
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
This richly illustrated book is a comprehensive study of visual humour in ancient Greece, emphasising works created in Athens and Boeotia.

Ancient Comedy and Reception

Ancient Comedy and Reception PDF Author: S. Douglas Olson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 161451125X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1098

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Book Description
This wide-ranging collection, consisting of 50 essays by leading international scholars in a variety of fields, provides an overview of the reception history of a major literary genre from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present day. Section I considers how the 5th- and 4th-century Athenian comic poets defined themselves and their plays, especially in relation to other major literary forms. It then moves on to the Roman world and to the reception of Greek comedy there in art and literature. Section II deals with the European reception of Greek and Roman comedy in the Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern periods, and with the European stage tradition of comic theater more generally. Section III treats the handling of Greco-Roman comedy in the modern world, with attention not just to literary translations and stage-productions, but to more modern media such as radio and film. The collection will be of interest to students of ancient comedy as well as to all those concerned with how literary and theatrical traditions are passed on from one time and place to another, and adapted to meet local conditions and concerns.

Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy

Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy PDF Author: Stephen E. Kidd
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139992902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
This book examines the concept of 'nonsense' in ancient Greek thought and uses it to explore the comedies of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. If 'nonsense' (phluaria, lēros) is a type of language felt to be unworthy of interpretation, it can help to define certain aspects of comedy that have proved difficult to grasp. Not least is the recurrent perception that although the comic genre can be meaningful (i.e. contain political opinions, moral sentiments and aesthetic tastes), some of it is just 'foolery' or 'fun'. But what exactly is this 'foolery', this part of comedy which allegedly lies beyond the scope of serious interpretation? The answer is to be found in the concept of 'nonsense': by examining the ways in which comedy does not mean, the genre's relationship to serious meaning (whether it be political, aesthetic, or moral) can be viewed in a clearer light.

Encyclopedia of Humor Studies

Encyclopedia of Humor Studies PDF Author: Salvatore Attardo
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483364712
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 985

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Book Description
The Encyclopedia of Humor Studies explores the concept of humor in history and modern society in the United States and internationally. This work’s scope encompasses the humor of children, adults, and even nonhuman primates throughout the ages, from crude jokes and simple slapstick to sophisticated word play and ironic parody and satire. As an academic social history, it includes the perspectives of a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, child development, social psychology, life style history, communication, and entertainment media. Readers will develop an understanding of the importance of humor as it has developed globally throughout history and appreciate its effects on child and adult development, especially in the areas of health, creativity, social development, and imagination. This two-volume set is available in both print and electronic formats. Features & Benefits: The General Editor also serves as Editor-in-Chief of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research for The International Society for Humor Studies. The book’s 335 articles are organized in A-to-Z fashion in two volumes (approximately 1,000 pages). This work is enhanced by an introduction by the General Editor, a Foreword, a list of the articles and contributors, and a Reader’s Guide that groups related entries thematically. A Chronology of Humor, a Resource Guide, and a detailed Index are included. Each entry concludes with References/Further Readings and cross references to related entries. The Index, Reader’s Guide themes, and cross references between and among related entries combine to provide robust search-and-browse features in the electronic version. This two-volume, A-to-Z set provides a general, non-technical resource for students and researchers in such diverse fields as communication and media studies, sociology and anthropology, social and cognitive psychology, history, literature and linguistics, and popular culture and folklore. Key Themes: Anthropology, Folklore, and Ethnicity Antiquity Components of Humor Culture Entertainment Industry History Literature and Major Literary Figures Performing Arts Philosophy and Religion Politics Psychology Clinical and Counseling Psychology Cognition Developmental Psychology General Psychology Health Psychology Interpersonal Relationships Motivation and Emotion Neuropsychology Personality and Social Psychology Tests and Measurement Professions Business World Education Law Humor Theory Linguistics Mathematics, Computer Science, and the Internet National, Ethnic, and Regional Humor Africa Americas Asia Europe Middle East Physiology and Biology Sociology Visual Humor

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 present volume sets forth the main resources for the advancing student of Ancient Greek Comedy. An international roster of specialists contributes chapters organized into three sections: "Contexts": the intellectual, physical and socio-historical setting of Athenian Comedy; "History": the literary history of the Old, Middle and New periods; and "Elements": the text, language and formal components of the genre (including a comprehensive bibliography). This Companion is designed as a resource for understanding and interpreting the classics of Athenian Comedy from its inception through Menander. It will also be useful for navigating the principal corpora of texts, fragments and scholia that have been revised and augmented in recent years.This unique volume occupies the middle ground between short surveys and highly specialized scholarship. Contributors include: W. Geoffrey Arnott, Angus Bowie, Eric Csapo, Gregory W. Dobrov, J. Richard Green, Stanley Ireland, Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, S. Douglas Olson, Alan H. Sommerstein, Ian Storey, Ralph M. Rosen, Andreas Willi, Bernhard Zimmermann.

The Language of Greek Comedy

The Language of Greek Comedy PDF Author: Andreas Willi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199245479
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The contributions to this volume illustrate how the linguistic study of Greek comedy can deepen our knowledge of the intricate connections between the dramatic texts and their literary and socio-cultural environment. Topics discussed include the relationship of comedy and iambus, the world of Doric comedy in Sicily, figures of speech and obscene vocabulary in Aristophanes, comic elements in tragedy, language and cultural identity in fifth-century Athens, linguistic characterizationin Middle Comedy, the textual transmission of New Comedy, and the interaction of language and dramatic technique in Menander. Research in these topics and in related areas is reviewed in an extensive bibliographical essay.While the main focus is on comedy, the diversity of the approaches adopted (including narratology, pragmatics, lexicology, dialectology, sociolinguistics, and textual criticism) ensures that much of the work applies to different genres and is relevant also to linguists and literary scholars.