Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres

Cambridge University Press, 4/18/2013
EAN 9781107033313, ISBN10: 1107033314

Hardcover, 422 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

Recent scholarship has acknowledged that the intertextual discourse of ancient comedy with previous and contemporary literary traditions is not limited to tragedy. This book is a timely response to the more sophisticated and theory-grounded way of viewing comedy's interactions with its cultural and intellectual context. It shows that in the process of its self-definition, comedy emerges as voracious and multifarious with a wide spectrum of literary, sub-literary and paraliterary traditions, the engagement with which emerges as central to its projected literary identity and, subsequently, to the reception of the genre itself. Comedy's self-definition through generic discourse far transcends the (narrowly conceived) 'high-low' division of genres. This book explores ancient comedy's interactions with Homeric and Hesiodic epic, iambos, lyric, tragedy, the fable tradition, the ritual performances of the Greek polis, and its reception in Platonic writings and Alexandrian scholarship, within a unified interpretative framework.

Introduction
comedy as a fabric of generic discourse Emmanuela Bakola, Lucia Prauscello and Mario Telò
Part I. Comedy and Genre
Self-Definition and Development
1. Greek dramatic genres
theoretical perspectives Michael Silk
2. Comedy and the Pompê
Dionysian genre-crossing Eric Csapo
3. Iambos, comedy and the question of generic affiliation Ralph Rosen
Part II. Comedy and Genres in Dialogue
4. Paraepic comedy
point(s) and practices Martin Revermann
5. Epic, nostos and generic genealogy in Aristophanes' Peace Mario Telò
6. Comedy and the civic chorus Chris Carey
7. Aristophanes' Simonides
lyric models for praise and blame Richard Rawles
8. Comedy versus tragedy in Wasps Matthew Wright
9. Crime and punishment
Cratinus on Aeschylus, on the metaphysics and on the politics of wealth Emmanuela Bakola
10. From Achilles' horses to a cheese-seller's shop
on the history of the guessing game in Greek drama Marco Fantuzzi and David Konstan
11. The Aesopic in Greek comedy Edith Hall
12. The mirror of Aristophanes
the winged ethnographers of Birds (1470–93, 1553–64, 1694–1705) Jeffrey Rusten
Part III. The Reception of Comedy and Comic Discourse
13. Comedy and comic discourse in Plato's Laws Lucia Prauscello
14. Comedy and the Pleiad
Alexandrian tragedians and the birth of comic scholarship Nick Lowe.