Author: K. J. Dover
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520022119
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Professor Dover's newest book is designed for those who are interested in the history of comedy as an art form but who are not necessarily familiar with the Greek language. The eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes are treated as representative of a genre. Old Attic Comedy, which was artistically and intellectually homogeneous and gave expression to the spirit of Athenian society in the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C. Aristophanes is regarded primarily not as a reformer or propagandist but as a dramatist who sought, in competition with his rivals, to win the esteem both of the general public and of the cultivated and critical minority. He succeeded in this effort by making people laugh, and the book pays more attention than has generally been paid to the technical means, whether of language or of situation, on which Aristophanes' humor depends. Particular emphasis is laid on his indifference-positively assisted by the physical limitations of the Greek theatre and the conditions of the Athenian dramatic festivals-to the maintenance of continuous “dramatic illusion” or to the provision of a dramatic event with the antecedents and consequences which might logically be expected. More importance is attached to Aristophanes' adoption of popular attitudes and beliefs, to his creation of uninhibited characters with which the spectators could identify themselves, and to his acceptance of the comic poet's traditional role as a mordant but jocular critic of morals, than to any identifiable and consistent elements in his political standpoint.
Aristophanic Comedy
Author: K. J. Dover
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520022119
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Professor Dover's newest book is designed for those who are interested in the history of comedy as an art form but who are not necessarily familiar with the Greek language. The eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes are treated as representative of a genre. Old Attic Comedy, which was artistically and intellectually homogeneous and gave expression to the spirit of Athenian society in the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C. Aristophanes is regarded primarily not as a reformer or propagandist but as a dramatist who sought, in competition with his rivals, to win the esteem both of the general public and of the cultivated and critical minority. He succeeded in this effort by making people laugh, and the book pays more attention than has generally been paid to the technical means, whether of language or of situation, on which Aristophanes' humor depends. Particular emphasis is laid on his indifference-positively assisted by the physical limitations of the Greek theatre and the conditions of the Athenian dramatic festivals-to the maintenance of continuous “dramatic illusion” or to the provision of a dramatic event with the antecedents and consequences which might logically be expected. More importance is attached to Aristophanes' adoption of popular attitudes and beliefs, to his creation of uninhibited characters with which the spectators could identify themselves, and to his acceptance of the comic poet's traditional role as a mordant but jocular critic of morals, than to any identifiable and consistent elements in his political standpoint.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520022119
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Professor Dover's newest book is designed for those who are interested in the history of comedy as an art form but who are not necessarily familiar with the Greek language. The eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes are treated as representative of a genre. Old Attic Comedy, which was artistically and intellectually homogeneous and gave expression to the spirit of Athenian society in the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C. Aristophanes is regarded primarily not as a reformer or propagandist but as a dramatist who sought, in competition with his rivals, to win the esteem both of the general public and of the cultivated and critical minority. He succeeded in this effort by making people laugh, and the book pays more attention than has generally been paid to the technical means, whether of language or of situation, on which Aristophanes' humor depends. Particular emphasis is laid on his indifference-positively assisted by the physical limitations of the Greek theatre and the conditions of the Athenian dramatic festivals-to the maintenance of continuous “dramatic illusion” or to the provision of a dramatic event with the antecedents and consequences which might logically be expected. More importance is attached to Aristophanes' adoption of popular attitudes and beliefs, to his creation of uninhibited characters with which the spectators could identify themselves, and to his acceptance of the comic poet's traditional role as a mordant but jocular critic of morals, than to any identifiable and consistent elements in his political standpoint.
Philosophy & Comedy
Author: Bernard Freydberg
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253351065
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 504
Book Description
Reveals comedy's contributions to the philosophical enterprise
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253351065
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 504
Book Description
Reveals comedy's contributions to the philosophical enterprise
Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy
Author: M. S. Silk
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199253821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468
Book Description
All Greek in the text is translated; the versions offered seek to convey the distinctive character of the original."--BOOK JACKET.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199253821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468
Book Description
All Greek in the text is translated; the versions offered seek to convey the distinctive character of the original."--BOOK JACKET.
Aristophanes' Comedy of Names
Author: Nikoletta Kanavou
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110247062
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
Aristophanes, the celebrated Greek comic poet, is famous for his plays on contemporary themes, in which he exercises fierce political satire. Ancient political comedy made ample use of comically significant proper names - much as is the case in modern satire. Comic names used by Aristophanes for his satirical targets (public figures, everyday Athenians) provide the main subject of this book, which addresses questions such as why particular names are chosen (or invented), and how they relate to the plays' characters and themes.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110247062
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
Aristophanes, the celebrated Greek comic poet, is famous for his plays on contemporary themes, in which he exercises fierce political satire. Ancient political comedy made ample use of comically significant proper names - much as is the case in modern satire. Comic names used by Aristophanes for his satirical targets (public figures, everyday Athenians) provide the main subject of this book, which addresses questions such as why particular names are chosen (or invented), and how they relate to the plays' characters and themes.
Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres
Author: Charles Platter
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 080189333X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 080189333X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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.
Aristophanic Comedy and the Challenge of Democratic Citizenship
Author: John Zumbrunnen
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580464178
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165
Book Description
Locates in Aristophanes' comedies a complex comic disposition appropriate to the fundamental challenge of ordinary citizenship in a democracy.
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580464178
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165
Book Description
Locates in Aristophanes' comedies a complex comic disposition appropriate to the fundamental challenge of ordinary citizenship in a democracy.
Aristophanes & the Cloak of Comedy
Author: Mario Telò
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022630972X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
The Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn in the humanities, Mario Telò explores a vital yet understudied question: how did this view of Aristophanes arise, and why did his popularity eventually eclipse that of his rivals? Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022630972X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
The Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn in the humanities, Mario Telò explores a vital yet understudied question: how did this view of Aristophanes arise, and why did his popularity eventually eclipse that of his rivals? Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes
Author: Gwendolyn Compton-Engle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107083796
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
This book interprets the handling of costume in the plays of the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, using as evidence the surviving plays as well as vase-paintings and terracotta figurines. This book fills a gap in the study of ancient Greek drama, focusing on performance, gender, and the body.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107083796
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
This book interprets the handling of costume in the plays of the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, using as evidence the surviving plays as well as vase-paintings and terracotta figurines. This book fills a gap in the study of ancient Greek drama, focusing on performance, gender, and the body.
Aristophanes and the Poetics of Surprise
Author: Dimitrios Kanellakis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110677032
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
The purpose of this book is to examine the variety, the mechanisms, and the poetological intention of the effect of surprise in Aristophanic comedy, addressing the phenomenon not as a self-evident or unselfconscious element of comedy as a genre, but as an elaborate system which characterises the style of the specific dramatist. More precisely, the book analyses Aristophanes’ most prominent verbal, thematic, and theatrical modes of surprise from a typological perspective, and interprets them as comprising the key area in which the playwright claims and demonstrates his artistic superiority over rival genres and individual poets. In line with this purpose, two parallel aims of the book are to provide an original commentary on the passages under examination, and to promote the study of modern performances – a practice which has so far been either restricted to Classical Reception or only theoretically acknowledged (if at all) by mainstream philological scholarship. This is a timely book on a topic of wide current interest across a range of interlocking disciplines: emotion studies, semiotics, narratology, information theory, and -most pertinently for this book- humour research.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110677032
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
The purpose of this book is to examine the variety, the mechanisms, and the poetological intention of the effect of surprise in Aristophanic comedy, addressing the phenomenon not as a self-evident or unselfconscious element of comedy as a genre, but as an elaborate system which characterises the style of the specific dramatist. More precisely, the book analyses Aristophanes’ most prominent verbal, thematic, and theatrical modes of surprise from a typological perspective, and interprets them as comprising the key area in which the playwright claims and demonstrates his artistic superiority over rival genres and individual poets. In line with this purpose, two parallel aims of the book are to provide an original commentary on the passages under examination, and to promote the study of modern performances – a practice which has so far been either restricted to Classical Reception or only theoretically acknowledged (if at all) by mainstream philological scholarship. This is a timely book on a topic of wide current interest across a range of interlocking disciplines: emotion studies, semiotics, narratology, information theory, and -most pertinently for this book- humour research.
Aristophanes
Author: Angus M. Bowie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521440127
Category : Greek drama (Comedy)
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
This book places the plays of Aristophanes in their contemporary context, asking what aspects of Greek, and especially Athenian, culture these comedies brought into play for their original audiences. It makes particular use of the structural analysis of Greek rituals and myths to demonstrate how their meanings and functions can be used to interpret the plays. This information is then used to suggest ways in which twentieth-century audiences may read the plays in terms of contemporary literary theories and concerns. This is the first book to apply the techniques of structural anthropology systematically to all the comedies. It does not impose a single interpretative structure on the plays but argues that each play operates with a range of different structures, and that groups of plays use similar structures in different ways. All Greek is translated.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521440127
Category : Greek drama (Comedy)
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
This book places the plays of Aristophanes in their contemporary context, asking what aspects of Greek, and especially Athenian, culture these comedies brought into play for their original audiences. It makes particular use of the structural analysis of Greek rituals and myths to demonstrate how their meanings and functions can be used to interpret the plays. This information is then used to suggest ways in which twentieth-century audiences may read the plays in terms of contemporary literary theories and concerns. This is the first book to apply the techniques of structural anthropology systematically to all the comedies. It does not impose a single interpretative structure on the plays but argues that each play operates with a range of different structures, and that groups of plays use similar structures in different ways. All Greek is translated.