Antiphanes is one of the most important writers of the Middle Attic comedy. His plays deal with matters connected to mythological subjects, although others referenced particular professional and national persons or characters, while other plays focused on the intrigues of personal life. This volume contains a critical text, translation and complete philological, literary and historical commentary on the fragments of Antiphanes' Sappho and subsequent plays, along with the fragments without a play-title (including dubia).
This volume forms the second part of the three-volume commentary on the fragments of Diphilus, who belongs to the prominent triad of the poets of New Comedy alongside Menander and Philemon. The present volume comprises the text and an English translation of the fragments of twenty-two plays of Diphilus, followed by a full-scale (philological, thematic, literary, interpretative, historical) commentary that also yields insight into the reception of Diphilan comedy in Roman theatre. This in-depth study of the Diphilan techniques of verbal humour and performance aims at shedding light on the dramatist's distinctive place in the comic tradition, as well as showcasing a degree of variation in the overall image of the production of new comedy.
The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, ‘theatre’ as well as ‘metatheatre’ are used in many different, sometimes even contradictory, ways by modern scholars. Through a series of papers examining questions related to ancient Greek theatre and dramatic performances of various genres the use of those two terms is problematized and put into question. Must ancient Greek theatre be reduced to what was performed in proper theatre-buildings? And is everything was performed within such buildings to be considered as ‘theatre’? How does the definition of what is considered as theatre evolve from one period to the other? As for ‘metatheatre’, the discussion revolves around the interaction between reality and fiction in dramatic pieces of all genres. The various definitions of ‘metatheatre’ are also explored and explicited by the papers gathered in this volume, as well as the question of the distinction between paratheatre (understood as paratragedy/comedy) and metatheatre. Readers will be encouraged by the diversity of approaches presented in this book to re-think their own understanding and use of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ when examining ancient Greek reality.
This work is part of the Fragmenta Comica series which aims to provide commentaries and translations to all the surviving fragments and testimonia of the comic poets of ancient Greece. This volume offers the first scholarly commentary and sustained study of several late fourth-century BCE poets of the so-called New Comedy – among them Philippides of Athens, a writer and dramatist highly esteemed in antiquity, known especially for his acrimonious clashes with Athenian demagogues and his influential friendship with foreign kings. All fragments are subject to close textual, linguistic and stylistic analysis, and are interpreted against the wider literary, social and historical background of the period. This volume will be a valuable reference work for scholars and students of ancient comedy, as well as anyone interested in ancient literature more generally and the broader historical and cultural contexts in which these texts were written.
English summary: The series 'Fragmenta Comica' will provide a complete commentary on the fragments of Greek comedy. The aim of the commentary is twofold: on the one hand, it is meant to make accessible these mostly rather challenging texts from a number of different perspectives. On the other hand, it should help in the reconstruction the plays where this is possible, as well as in achieving a literary-historical classification of the authors. The fragments and testimonia will be translated. The results obtained in the commentary will be integrated into general surveys published in the Studia Comica series: on comedy and comedy techniques such as parody and satire as well as on its political function. The project is planned to take fifteen years to complete. German summary: Die Reihe Fragmenta Comica wird die vollstandige Kommentierung der Fragmente der griechischen Komodie bieten. Ziel der Kommentare ist es, einerseits die in der Regel schwierig zu verstehenden Texte unter allen moglichen Gesichtspunkten zu erschlieaen, andererseits, wo dies moglich ist, eine Rekonstruktion der Stucke zu versuchen und eine literaturgeschichtliche Einordnung der Autoren vorzunehmen. Die Fragmente und Testimonien werden ubersetzt. Die in den Kommentaren erzielten Ergebnisse sollen in allgemeine Studien einflieaen, die in den Studia Comica veroffentlicht werden: zur Komik und komischen Techniken wie Parodie, Satire sowie zur politischen Funktion. Prof. Dr. Bernhard Zimmermann leitet die Forschungsstelle Kommentierung der Fragmente der griechischen Komodie an der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Die Arbeitsstelle des Projekts ist am Seminar fur Klassische Philologie der Universitat Freiburg angesiedelt. Ein Weblog berichtet aktuell uber den Fortgang des Projekts, das auf 15 Jahre ausgelegt ist. Das Projekt ist international vernetzt und arbeitet mit Zentren zur Erforschung der fragmentarisch erhaltenen griechischen Literatur in Italien, Groabritannien und den USA zusammen.
This volume is devoted to the over 200 fragments of Cratinus for which have no play title. Much of the material has never been commented on previously. Douglas Olson and Ryan Seaberg offer a close literary, philological and historical study of the fragments, with particular attention to textual, poetic and linguistic issues of all sorts and to the lexicographic sources that preserve the material. Their general goal is to open up problems and perspectives rather than to shut them down. By teasing out some of their individual puzzles and peculiarities they want to render the fragments accessible to further scholarly work. The commentary of the Fragmenta Comica series illuminate not only the genre history of comedy, but also the Greek literary history of the Classical and Hellenistic period.
