Greek Comedy and Ideology

Greek Comedy and Ideology

Author: David Konstan

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0195092945

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study analyzes how the structure of ancient Greek comedy betrays and responds to cultural tensions in the society of the classical city-state. Individual chapters treat Aristophanic and Menandrean comedies.


Greek Comedy and Ideology

Greek Comedy and Ideology

Author: David Konstan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1995-04-06

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0195357698

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In comedy, happy endings resolve real-world conflicts. These conflicts, in turn, leave their mark on the texts in the form of gaps in plot and inconsistencies of characterization. Greek Comedy and Ideology analyzes how the structure of ancient Greek comedy betrays and responds to cultural tensions in the society of the classical city-state. It explores the utopian vision of Aristophanes' comedies--for example, an all-powerful city inhabited by birds, or a world of limitless wealth presided over by the god of wealth himself--as interventions in the political issues of his time. David Konstan goes on to examine the more private world of Menandrean comedy (including two adaptations of Menander by the Roman playwright Terence), in which problems of social status, citizenship, and gender are negotiated by means of elaborately contrived plots. In conclusion, Konstan looks at an imitation of ancient comedy by Moliére, and the way in which the ideology of emerging capitalism transforms the premises of the classical genre.


The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy

Author: Martin Revermann

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-06-12

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 0521760283

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides a unique panorama of this challenging area of Greek literature, combining literary perspectives with historical issues and material culture.


Democratic Swarms

Democratic Swarms

Author: Page duBois

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-05-04

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0226815757

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Considers how ancient Greek comedy offers a model for present-day politics. With Democratic Swarms, Page duBois revisits the role of Greek comedy in ancient politics, considering how it has been overlooked as a political medium by modern theorists and critics. Moving beyond the popular readings of ancient Greece through the lens of tragedy, she calls for a revitalized look at Greek comedy. Rather than revisiting the sufferings of Oedipus and his family or tragedy’s relationship to questions of sovereignty, this book calls for comedy—its laughter, its free speech, its wild swarming animal choruses, and its rebellious women—to inform another model of democracy. Ancient comedy has been underplayed in the study of Greek drama. Yet, with the irrepressible energy of the comic swarm, it provides a unique perspective on everyday life, gender and sexuality, and the utopian politics of the classical period of Athenian democracy. Using the concepts of swarm intelligence and nomadic theory, duBois augments tragic thought with the resistant, utopian, libidinous, and often joyous communal legacy of comedy, and she connects the lively anti-authoritarianism of the ancient comic chorus with the social justice movements of today.


Ancient Greek Comedy

Ancient Greek Comedy

Author: Almut Fries

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-06-22

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 3110646269

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume, in honour of Angus M. Bowie, collects seventeen original essays on Greek comedy. Its contributors treat questions of origin, genre and artistic expression, interpret individual plays from different angles (literary, historical, performative) and cover aspects of reception from antiquity to the 20th century. Topics that have not received much attention so far, such as the prehistory of Doric comedy or music in Old Comedy, receive a prominent place. The essays are arranged in three sections: (1) Genre, (2) Texts and Contexts, (3) Reception. Within each section the chapters are as far as possible arranged in chronological order, according to historical time or to the (putative) dates of the plays under discussion. Thus readers will be able to construe their own diachronic and thematic connections, for example between the portrayal of stock characters in early Doric farce and developed Attic New Comedy or between different forms of comic reception in the fourth century BC. The book is intended for professional scholars, graduate and undergraduate students. Its wide range of subjects and approaches will appeal not only to those working on Greek comedy, but to anyone interested in Greek drama and its afterlife.


Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy

Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy

Author: Stephen E. Kidd

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-06-12

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1107050154

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book employs the concept of 'nonsense' to explore those parts of Greek comedy perceived as 'just silly' and therefore 'not meaningful'.


Roman Comedy

Roman Comedy

Author: David Konstan

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9780801493980

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


Greek Comedy

Greek Comedy

Author: Gilbert Norwood

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-04-26

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1000579220

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Originally published in 1931, this book surveys the origin and development of Greek Comic Drama, with full discussion not only of Aristophanes and Menander but also of other important playwrights whose work had usually received scant notice because only fragments of it have survived. The important papyrus-finds of the previous forty years have been expounded and used. The final chapter is an introduction to comic metre and rhythm.