Ancient Comedy and Reception

S. Douglas Olson

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781614511250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This wide-ranging collection, consisting of 50 essays by leading international scholars in a variety of fields, provides an overview of the reception history of a major literary genre from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present day. Section I considers how the 5th- and 4th-century Athenian comic poets defined themselves and their plays, especially in relation to other major literary forms. It then moves on to the Roman world and to the reception of Greek comedy there in art and literature. Section II deals with the European reception of Greek and Roman comedy in the Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern periods, and with the European stage tradition of comic theater more generally. Section III treats the handling of Greco-Roman comedy in the modern world, with attention not just to literary translations and stage-productions, but to more modern media such as radio and film. The collection will be of interest to students of ancient comedy as well as to all those concerned with how literary and theatrical traditions are passed on from one time and place to another, and adapted to meet local conditions and concerns.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Ancient Comedy and Receptions
• Exchanging Metaphors in Cratinus and Aristophanes
• Comic Parrhêsia and the Paradoxes of Repression
• Slipping One In: The Introduction of Obscene Lexical Items in Aristophanes
• Ancient Comedy and Historiography: Aristophanes Meets Herodotus
• Epiphany of a Serious Dionysus in a Comedy?
• Toponimi e immaginario sessuale nella Lisistrata di Aristofane
• Dionysus’ Choice in Frogs and Aristophanes’ Paraenetic Pedigree
• Two Phaedras: Euripides and Aristophanes?
• Plato’s Aristophanes
• Menander’s Samia and the Phaedra Theme
• Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Comedy: Menander’s Kolax in Three Roman Receptions (Naevius, Plautus and Terence’s Eunuchus)
• Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus: Gnaeus Naevius as a Latin Aristophanes?
• Plautus und die Techniken des Improvisationstheaters
• Lege dura vivont mulieres: Syra’s Complaint about the Sexual Double Standard (Plautus Merc. 817–29)
• “Letting It All Hang Out”: Lucian, Old Comedy and the Origins of Roman Satire
• Old Comedy at Rome: Rhetorical Model and Satirical Problem
• Inventing Everything: Comic and Performative Sources of Graeco-Roman Fiction
• From Drama to Narrative: The Reception of Comedy in the Ancient Novel
• Greek Culture as Images: Menander’s Comedies and Their Patrons in the Roman West and the Greek East
• The Evidence of the Zeugma Synaristosai Mosaic for Imperial Performance of Menander
• Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Receptions
• Medieval Vernacular Versions of Ancient Comedy: Geoffrey Chaucer, Eustache Deschamps, Vitalis of Blois and Plautus’ Amphitryon
• Aristofane mascherato: Un secolo (1415–1504) di fortuna e ‘sfortuna’
• L’influence de Plaute sur la définition du comique chez Giovanni Pontano
• Strepsiades’ Latin Voice: Two Renaissance Translations of Aristophanes’ Clouds
• The Trickster Onstage: The Cunning Slave from Plautus to Commedia dell’Arte
• Aristophanes in England, 1500–1660
• Exaggerating Terence’s Andria: Steele’s The Conscious Lovers, Bellamy’s The Perjur’d Devotee and Terentian Criticism
• Roman Comedy and Renaissance Revenge Drama: Titus Andronicus as Exemplary Text
• Molière and the Roman Comic Tradition
• Jacob Masen’s Rusticus imperans (1657) and Ancient Theater
• La recepción de Plauto y Terencio en la literatura española
• Reform: A Farce Modernised from Aristophanes (1792)
• Modern Receptions
• Polos und Polis: Aristophanes’ Vögel und deren Bearbeitung durch Goethe, Karl Kraus und Peter Hacks
• Translations of Aristophanes in Italy in the 19th century
• Close Encounters of the Comic Kind: Aristophanes’ Frogs and Lysistrata in Athenian Mythological Burlesque of the 1880s
• Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse: Shakespeare Made Plautine
• She (Don’t) Gotta Have It: African-American Reception of Lysistrata
• „Es ist, um aus der Rüstung zu fahren!“: Erich Kästners Adaption der Acharner des Aristophanes
• Lysistrata on Broadway
• “Attend, O Muse, Our Holy Dances and Come to Rejoice in Our Songs”: The Reception of Aristophanes in the Modern Musical Theate
• Aristophanes at the BBC, 1940s–1960s
• Cultural Politics and Aesthetic Debate in Two Modern Versions of Aristophanes’ Frogs
• Ionesco’s New and Old Comedy
• Aristophanes in the Cinema; or, the Metamorphoses of Lysistrata
• Who’s Afraid of Aristophanes? The Troubled Life of Ancient Comedy in 20th-Century Italy
• Aristophanes in Israel: Comedy, Theatricality, Politics
• Culture, Education and Politics: Greek and Roman Comedy in Afrikaans
• The Maculate Muse in the 21st Century: Recent Adaptations of Aristophanes’ Peace and Ecclesiazusae
• Eschyle et Euripide entre tragédie et comédie: polyphonie et interprétation dans quelques traductions récentes des Grenouilles d’Aristophane
• Business as Usual: Plautus’ Menaechmi in English Translation
• Index of Names and Subjects