Greek Comedy

In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational discipline with Aristotle in a time of literacy and empire. Crick advances the thesis that rhetoric is primarily a medium and artistry of power, but that the relationship between rhetoric and power at any point in time is a product of historical conditions, not the least of which is the development and availability of communication media.
Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.
Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.

The topic of this paper (delivered at a recent seminar in Chieti, 13 December 2018) is the vision of democratic politics implicit in Aristophanes' Wasps, with particular attention to Cleon. In particular, I argue that what Cleon represents has changed over the last few years, as has the significance of the late 5th-century Athenian democratic experiment, as a result of the rise of Donald Trump. The paper will eventually appear in the Atti of the conference, but I am posting it in advance of that due to the timeliness of the topic. Readers interested primarily in Cleon and Trump may wish to skip the central section of the paper, which is largely occupied with Aristophanic politics.

Despite some information given by Poll. IX 83, the general economy of Pherecrates’
Krapataloi remains unclear. Aside from the difficulties (the fragments are often quoted by ancient
sources without any other information regarding the text), some fragments (i.e. Fr. 85, 86,
87 and 89 Kassel - Austin) seem to be related to the katabasis or during the journey through
the Underworld, where the poet locates a ‘‘land of plenty’’. References cited in some verses
may indicate important clues useful for a plausible reconstruction of the context.

Edited by Philip Walsh, Washington College

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes provides a substantive account of the reception of Aristophanes (c. 446-386 BC) from Antiquity to the present. Aristophanes was the renowned master of Old Attic Comedy, a dramatic genre defined by its topical satire, high poetry, frank speech, and obscenity. Since their initial production in classical Athens, his comedies have fascinated, inspired, and repelled critics, readers, translators, and performers. The book includes seventeen chapters that explore the ways in which the plays of Aristophanes have been understood, appropriated, adapted, translated, taught, and staged. Careful attention has been given to critical moments of reception across temporal, linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries.

Published in ΚΕΦΑΛΛΗΝΙΑΚΑ ΧΡΟΝΙΚΑ (KEPHALLENIAKA CHRONIKA), vol. 16 (2015), pp. 383-397. (published in Cephalonia, Greece, by the Society of Cephalonian Historical Studies).
Το 1883 δημοσιεύεται στην Κεφαλονιά η κωμωδία "Ο στρατιώτης γαμβρός" του Ληξουριώτη Κοσμά Μοντεσάντου-Καναλέτη. Ο αναλφάβητος Καναλέτης παρουσιάζει στο κοινό μια  κωμωδία, όχι "τοπικού" ενδιαφέροντος, προορισμένη να παιχτεί κατ' αρχήν από τους φιλόμουσους Ληξουριώτες. Η έκδοσή της ωστόσο υποδηλώνει τη διάθεση του συγγραφέα να ξεπεράσει το έργο του τα όρια του νησιού.
This paper is about a theatrical comedy called "The soldier groom" written and published in Cephalonia, Greece, in 1883. The author Cosmas Montesantos-Kanalettis is a comedy that remonds us of the soldier heroes in commedia dell' arte.

Inspired by the growing attention to the politics of comedy in the United States and elsewhere, this paper asks what it would mean to think critically about relations of power mobilized through cheerfulness, humor, and laughter. The paper shows that existing answers to this question are tainted by skepticism about the enduring contributions of comic acts, and it then goes on to suggest that we turn to an alternative trajectory in democratic theory, one that encourages us to focus on the empowering and pluralizing potential embedded in what the paper names  “comic power.” The wager is that attention to the potential embedded in this power can give us new traction on the conditions of democracy more broadly understood. To show this, the paper draws on two rarely paired resources—Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence and Dave Chappelle’s critique of racial discrimination—placing both of them in conversation with discussions about the mediations embedded in new media technologies.

The first aim of this paper is to illustrate the various meanings of the word πονηρός (together with the antonym χρηστός) and especially its usage from the last quarter of V century b.C. to the first half of IV, both in theatrical literature and in political jargon; the semantic gap between the etymological sense of this term and its occurrences in post-Periclean age is due to the great social renewals in VI-V cent. and next to the decline of the democratic parabola in Athens. Consequently, the paper shows the tight connections between comic and political lexicon: according to Alessandro Grilli, all Aristophanes’ comedies concern politics and therefore refer to its vocabulary in order to inspire audience’s laugh and blame.

https://elibrary.steiner-verlag.de/article/10.25162/hermes-2020-0031

This article addresses the topic of excerpts by focusing on modern excerpting practices used in the analysis of Greek myth. It examines the mythological exemplum about Melanion and Timon from Aristophanes' Lysistrata within the context of Greek myth's flexibility and potential for innovation. After discussing the innovative details of the exempla, I turn to the use of the Melanion excerpt by two prominent classicists, P. Vidal-Naquet and M. Detienne. This leads to some general remarks on the transmission of knowledge regarding mythological lore, as well as on our modern scholarly practices of excerpting passages out of their original context.

Peace is one of Aristophanes’ most poetically resonant comedies. This work provides an analysis of a paratragic feature hitherto almost neglected by scholars, the figure of Prometheus, especially as characterised in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. In his poetical and parodistic texture, Aristophanes uses some of Prometheus’ most evident peculiarities to describe Trygeus and Hermes, once he has accepted to join the Greeks in the release of Peace; the observation of the different uses that Aristophanes makes of this paradigm throughout the comedy helps to understand the progression of action and characterization in Peace.

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The Greek tragic mask was the focus of the entire visual and emotional experience of ancient drama. The close coordination of masked movement with music, song, and spoken word allowed the ambiguity of the mask to provoke a highly personal response in the mind of each individual spectator. Their neural processing mechanisms would have been stimulated by the context of what was presented, and then fired to create a deeply personal emotional image. In this way, the visual ambiguity of the mask greatly enhanced the presentation of tragedy. Thus, the tragic mask was far more powerful that the real face of an actor, as it constantly changed, reflecting the emotional realities of each person sitting before its compelling gaze.

Sobre la base de la consideración de los mitos griegos como textos culturales, este trabajo analiza el Pluto
de Aristófanes como un tratamiento paródico y carnavalesco de las luchas por la sucesión entre los dioses. A
partir de los indicios textuales relacionados con la lexía κεφαλή (cabeza), se establece una inversión cómica
del eje semiótico autoridad/subversión.

Die Frauenkomödien  bieten auf Grund ihrer zahlreichen strukturellen und inhaltlichen Parallelen die einzigartige Möglichkeit, die Darstellung von Frauen in der aristo-phanischen Komödie vergleichend zu untersuchen. Die Lysistrata (411) und die Ekklesiazusen (393/92)  bilden innerhalb dieser Trias wiederum ein besonderes Paar. Ihnen beiden ist das Motiv gemein, die Geschlechterhierarchie  und die mit ihr verbundenen Rollenbilder für die Dauer der Komödie auf den Kopf zu stellen. Frauen treten zum Wohl der pólis aus der häuslichen Verschwiegenheit auf die politische Bühne, da ihre Männer dort versagt haben.  Die Ekklesiazusen sind das sozialpolitische Pendant einer außenpolitischen
engagierten Lysistrata,  geht es in der einen Komödie doch um den Frieden nach innen, in der anderen aber um den erlösenden Friedensschluss im erbittert geführten Peloponnesischen Krieg. Beide sind eine reiche Quelle für Tagespolitik, Alltagsleben und Geschlechterbeziehung ihrer Zeit.
Wird der Fokus der Arbeit auch auf der Analyse von Lysistrate und ihren Mitstreiterinnen liegen, so sollen genug Querver-bindungen Gleiches für Praxagora und die weibliche Personage aus den Ekklesiazusen erweisen.
Will man die Komödien als kultur- und sozialgeschichtliche Quelle nutzbar machen, muss man sich zunächst genauer mit dem „Komischen“ in der Alten Komödie befassen.  Hierzu drängen sich dem Leser einige Fragen auf: Was und wer taugt zum Spott, welche Bedingungen werden an das „Lachhafte“ gestellt? Gibt es verschiedene Ebenen der Komik? Was ist Mittel, was ist Zweck der Komödie? Welche Aufgabe weist sich
der Dichter selbst zu? Welche Rolle spielen Geschlecht, Mythos, Kult und Fest? Wann sind Frauen „komisch“ und für welches Publikum? Wie ist es um den Rechtsstatus der „realen“ Frauen bestellt? Um aus der Komödie Einblicke in die Geschlechterbeziehung von Mann und Frau in klassischer Zeit zu gewinnen, müssen also erst Antworten gefunden werden, um zielführende Fragen stellen zu können. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit sollen daher die Voraussetzungen für die eigentliche Analyse geschaffen werden.

Este breve estudo comparativo das comédias de Aristófanes Os Cavaleiros e Os Acarnenses pretende abordar a forma pela qual política do representante democrático da Atenas do século V a.C. era vista por Aristófanes, tal como a crítica que o comediógrafo faz da situação política da pólis, tendo em consideração o alvo maior da crítica nas duas peças, o representante político Cléon.

The Fragments of Crates Comicus. Introduction, translation and commentary.

This volume of the series «Fragmenta Comica» is devoted to one of the major names in the first generation of comic poets, Crates. Mentioned by Aristophanes in the Knights among his predecessors ill-treated by the audience, and credited in Aristoteles’ Poetics of a key-role within the history of the comic genre, Crates appears to have received significant attention in antiquity. Yet tradition has not been kind with him and the remains of his production are very scanty and in many ways problematic. Almost half a century after the last monograph devoted to Crates, the volume offers a new close analysis of the testimonia and the sixty surviving fragments, translated and commented in detail. The picture that emerges is of a much more nuanced profile than previously described.

In the passage from the archaic period to classical antiquity literary and iconographic sources, especially Athenian ones, increasingly feature representations of dangerous heroines which express male fear of women. Female warriors, rulers, killers, stepmothers, seducers, sorceresses, Maenads, girls who refuse marriage: all escape their assigned social role. The recurrence of such figures during the classical age poses a number of questions: are there specific categories of threatening women in the Greeks’, and in particular, the Athenians’ perception? In what way and to what extent do these representations vary in the course of Greek history? Do they serve specific functions in the political and social context in which they are placed? In order to answer these questions, after an introductory section devoted to the general historical and theoretical framework, I have carried out an analysis of the categories of threatening women represented in the sources. These are characters who appropriate what the Greeks perceived as male prerogatives, or who embody negative traits which high and popular culture attributed to genos gynaikon: these are figures of women who, in a variety of ways, escape the paradigm of conjugal and maternal femininity. Finally, the research provides a reflection on the political functions of these representations in connection with forms of marriage and dowry, and with the relations between the two social sexes in the polis, and more, in general, in connection with the political structures of the city from the archaic to the classical period and their transformations.

In Dyskolos , produced in 316 B.C., Menander implied his support for Demetrios of Phaleron and the Macedonian-backed oligarchy Demetrios headed as epimeletes. The play's mixed-class marriages involved only families that remained enfranchised under the oligarchy's wealth requirement. Thus, they did not indicate support for democratic egalitarianism, but citizen solidarity under the oligarchy. The play's ethical theme, ἐπιμέλεια - solicitous care of those in need - implied support for the epimeletes personally. Knemon's rage evoked the mob that had condemned the previous oligarch Phokion in 318. Knemon's subsequent catastrophe warned the demos that they must acquiesce in Macedonian hegemony.

Θέμα της εργασίας: Ένας σύγχρονος Καραγκιοζοπαίχτης είναι το θέατρο σκιών και ο Καραγκιόζης, ιδωμένα υπό το πρίσμα ενός σύγχρονου Καραγκιοζοπαίχτη, του Αντρέα Ρήγα. Για τις ανάγκες της έρευνας καταρτίστηκε ένα ερωτηματολόγιο με εικοσιεπτά ερωτήσεις σχετικές με όλες τις πτυχές μιας παράστασης Καραγκιόζη. Συγκεκριμένα, εξετάστηκε η διαδικασία προετοιμασίας μιας παράστασης, η κατασκευή των φιγούρων, το στήσιμο των σκηνικών, η σύνθεση της μουσικής, η επαφή με το κοινό, τα προσόντα του Καραγκιοζοπαίχτη και η σημασία του Καραγκιόζη σήμερα. Από τη συνέντευξη που εκπονήθηκε προέκυψαν χρήσιμα συμπεράσματα.

Λέξεις Κλειδιά: Καραγκιόζης, Θέατρο Σκιών, Καραγκιοζοπαίχτης, Λαογραφία

Plautus’ Roman comedy Menaechmi (The Two Menaechmuses) of c. 200 BC anticipates in fictional form the famous Rosenhan experiment of 1973, a landmark critique of psychiatric diagnosis. An analysis of the scenes of feigned madness and psychiatric examination suggests that the play (and the earlier Greek play from which it was adapted) offers two related ethical reflections, one on the validity of psychiatric diagnoses, the other on the validity of the entire medical model of insanity—that is, of the popular notion and political truth that mental illness is a (bodily) disease “like any other.” This essay is offered as a contribution to the interpretation of the play as well as to the history of psychiatry.

A close reading of three Aristophanic scenes in which non-elite Athenian citizen characters confront one another in ways which highlight issues relating to the operation of Athenian democratic social values. The analysis teases out an intricate comic interplay between foreground absurdism and background realism.

Surprisingly few gods appear in the eleven surviving comedies of Aristophanes. This article examines what roles the gods do play when they are present. It further argues that humans with divine attributes often appear in lieu of the gods themselves. These humans, together with the handful of gods who are present, fall into the broad functional categories of helpers and opponents of the comic protagonist. The gods' absence is to be attributed to an Aristophanic conception of human agency, namely that humans in comedy, especially when compared to tragedy, have extraordinary control of their lives. A god's presence would be too great a threat to comic inventiveness.

This is a comparison of Agathon’s role in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae and Plato’s Symposium. Firstly, I examine the Platonic version, and the unique, idiosyncratic part Plato gives Agathon to play, as a host to all, and a hostage to Socrates. Secondly, I discuss his interaction with Inlaw, the ordinary Athenian, in Aristophanes’ play. Such parallel reading allows us not only to refine our outlook on the dramatic construction both of the “talking party” and of the comic performance, but also to capture how really poikilos, for better or worse, that urban love could be. Finally, I analyze the significance of this juxtaposition, as an intertext. Plato, I argue, produces a proper palinode of Agathon, as an erotikos and a mimetic poet. By taking seriously the face-to-face between Agathon and Agathon, two dissonant and yet compatible variations on one man, our picture of Athenian erotic culture emerges sharper, and in greater detail. 
Key words:
Eros, sensuality, praise, blame, softness, manliness, effeminacy, body, language.

Il volume racconta il monumento nei suoi dettagli, dalle origini greche alla sua trasformazione nel quartiere catanese chiamato “Grotte”, fino alla sua riscoperta nella metà del ‘700 e alla progressiva liberazione dalle case che nel tempo lo avevano nascosto. Ma il volume racconta anche di quanto intimo e quotidiano fosse il rapporto tra questo grande spazio pubblico e gli antichi catanesi, di come vi si svolgessero gli spettacoli, dalle tragedie greche di età classica alle commedie romane, di come si ingannasse il tempo tra uno spettacolo e l’altro, attraverso gli oggetti smarriti dagli spettatori, attraverso le centinaia di lucerne che illuminavano al crepuscolo la grande cavea e la strada del ritorno a casa.