Aristophanes and the Poetics of Competition

This book demonstrates how the competitive context in which Athenian comic drama was performed shaped the poetry and plots of Aristophanes' plays.

Zachary P. Biles (Author)

9781107525948, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 May 2015

304 pages
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'… this book is a thoroughly researched, imaginative and engaging piece of scholarship which deserves a prominent place in Aristophanic studies.' Emmanuela Bakola, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Athenian comic drama was written for performance at festivals honouring the god Dionysos. Through dramatic action and open discourse, poets sought to engage their rivals and impress the audience, all in an effort to obtain victory in the competitions. This book uses that competitive performance context as an interpretive framework within which to understand the thematic interests shaping the plots and poetic quality of Aristophanes' plays in particular, and of Old Comedy in general. Studying five individual plays from the Aristophanic corpus as well as fragments of other comic poets, it reveals the competitive poetics distinctive to each. It also traces thematic connections with other poetic traditions, especially epic, lyric, and tragedy, and thereby seeks to place competitive poetics within broader trends in Greek literature.

Acknowledgments
Dedication
Abbreviations
Proagon
1. From Thamyris to Aristophanes: the competitive poetics of the comic parabasis
2. The competitive partnership of Aristophanes and Dikaiopolis in Acharnians
3. Aristophanes' poetic tropaion: competitive didaskalia and contest records in Knights
4. Intertextual biography in the rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes
5. Aristophanes' Clouds-palinode
6. Dionysos and dionysia in Frogs
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]