For many years the domain of specialists in early Latin, in complex metres, and in the reconstruction of texts, Roman comedy is now established in the mainstream of Classical literary criticism. Where most books stress the original performance as the primary location for the encountering of the plays, this book finds the locus of meaning and appreciation in the activity of a reader, albeit one whose manner of reading necessarily involves the imaginative reconstruction of performance. The texts are treated, and celebrated, as literary devices, with programmatic beginnings, middles, ends, and intertexts. All the extant plays of Plautus and Terence have at least a bit part in this book, which seeks to expose the authors' fabulous artificiality and artifice, while playing along with their differing but interrelated poses of generic humility.

This book explores the social institutions, the prevailing social values, and the ideology of the ancient city-state as revealed in Roman Comedy. "The very essence of comedy is social," writes David Konstan, "and in the complex movement of its plots we may be able to discern the lineaments and contradictions of the reigning ideas of an age." David Konstan looks closely at eight plays: Plautus's Aulularia, Asinaria, Captivi, Rudens, Cistellaria, and Truculentus, and Terence's Phormio and Hecyra. Offering new interpretations of each, he develops a "typology of plot forms" by analyzing structural features and patterns of conventional behavior in the plays, and he relates the results of his literary analysis to contemporary social conditions. He argues that the plays address tensions that were potentially disruptive to the ancient city-state, and that they tended to resolve these tensions in ways that affirmed traditional values. Roman Comedy is an innovative and challenging book that will be welcomed by students of classical literature, ancient social history, the history of the theater, and comedy as a genre.

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction to and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From its birth in Greece to its end in Rome, from its Hellenistic to its Imperial receptions, no topic is neglected. The 41 essays offer cutting-edge guides through comedy's immense terrain.

This book provides the most complete and definitive study of Roman comedy. Originally published in 1952. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book offers a new explanation of how the plays of Plautus and Terence worked as musical theatre.

This anthology contains English translations of five plays by two of the best practitioners of Roman comedy, Plautus and Terence. The plays, Menaechmi, Rudens, Truculentus, Adelphoe, and Eunuchus, provide an introduction to the world of Roman comedy. As with all Focus translations, the emphasis is on a handsomely produced, inexpensive, readable edition that is close to the original, with an extensive introduction, notes and appendices.

Provides a comprehensive critical engagement with Roman comedy and its reception presented by leading international scholars in accessible and up-to-date chapters.

Argues that Catullus adapts Roman comedy to explore private ideas about love, friendship, and social rivalry.

Comedy and the Rise of Rome invites the reader to consider Roman comedy in the light of history and Roman history in the light of comedy. Plautus and Terence base their dramas on the New Comedy of fourth- and third-century BC Greece. Yet many of the themes with which they engage are peculiarly alive in the Rome of the Hannibalic war, and the conquest of Macedon. This study takes issues as diverse as the legal status of the prisoner of war, the ethics of ambush, fatherhoodand command, and the clash of maritime and agrarian economies, and examines responses to them both on the comic stage and in the world at large. This is a substantially new departure in ways of thinking about Roman comedy and one that opens it up to a far wider public than has previously been thecase.

Much of what we know of Greco-Roman comedy comes from the surviving works of just four playwrights—the Greeks Aristophanes and Menander and the Romans Plautus and Terence. To introduce these authors and their work to students and general readers, this book offers a new, accessible translation of a representative play by each playwright, accompanied by a general introduction to the author's life and times, a scholarly article on a prominent theme in the play, and a bibliography of selected readings about the play and playwright. This range of material, rare in a single volume, provides several reading and teaching options, from the study of a single author to an overview of the entire Classical comedic tradition. The plays have been translated for readability and fidelity to the original text by established Classics scholars. Douglas Olson provides the translation and commentary for Aristophanes' Acharnians, Shawn O'Bryhim for Menander's Dyskolos, George Fredric Franco for Plautus' Casina, and Timothy J. Moore for Terence's Phormio.