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.

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.

Reveals comedy's contributions to the philosophical enterprise

All Greek in the text is translated; the versions offered seek to convey the distinctive character of the original."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

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.

Locates in Aristophanes' comedies a complex comic disposition appropriate to the fundamental challenge of ordinary citizenship in a democracy.

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.

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.

Comic Business situates Aristophanic comedy in the context of competitive (re)performance culture in 5th- and 4th-century Greece. It seeks to illuminate how the dazzling busyness of Aristophanic comedy is the creation of a carefully manipulating craftsman trying to outdo his rivals in the fierce competition of the dramatic festivals. Theoretically informed by theatre semiotics and frame-based models of conceptualizing the theatrical event, it analyses in a number of casestudies how theatrical resources of all kinds are utilized in order to generate theatrical meaning as well as capture and sustain audience interest. The approach therefore combines philological analysis with methodologies developed in Theatre Studies. Special attention is given to the visual dimension oftheatrical communication. Material from comparator traditions is brought to bear, as is the evidence of the pictorial record.