The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy

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

Martin Revermann (Edited by)

9780521760287, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 June 2014

522 pages, 24 b/w illus. 1 map 4 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.8 cm, 0.86 kg

'All in all, this is a superb companion: a comprehensive and rich collection that will serve as an invaluable resource for students and specialists alike. It is a work full of clever and challenging essays …' E. P. Moloney, Phoenix

Greek comedy flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, both in and beyond Athens. Aristophanes and Menander are the best-known writers whose work is in part extant, but many other dramatists are known from surviving fragments of their plays. This sophisticated but accessible introduction explores the genre as a whole, integrating literary questions (such as characterisation, dramatic technique or diction) with contextual ones (for example audience response, festival context, interface with ritual or political frames). In addition, it also discusses relevant historical issues (political, socio-economic and legal) as well as the artistic and archaeological evidence. The result provides a unique panorama of this challenging area of Greek literature which will be of help to students at all levels and from a variety of disciplines but will also provide stimulus for further research.

Introduction Martin Revermann
Part I. Setting the Stage (in Athens and Beyond): 1. Defining the genre David Konstan
2. The rivals of Aristophanes and Menander Zachary P. Biles
3. Fourth-century comedy before Menander Keith Sidwell
4. Epicharmus and early Sicilian comedy Kathryn Bosher
5. The iconography of comedy Eric Csapo
Part II. Comic Theatre: 6. Dramatic technique and Athenian comedy C. W. Marshall
7. Character types Ian Ruffell
8. The language(s) of comedy Andreas Willi
Part III. Central Themes: 9. Laughter Stephen Halliwell
10. Utopianism Ian Ruffell
11. The Greek 'comic hero' Ralph M. Rosen
12. Social class David Kawalko Roselli
13. Performing gender in Greek Old and New Comedy Helene Foley
14. Divinity and religious practice Martin Revermann
Part IV. Politics, Law and Social History: 15. The politics of Greek comedy Alan Sommerstein
16. Comedy and Athenian festival culture Edith Hall
17. Comedy and Athenian law Victoria Wohl
18. Comedy and the social historian Susan Lape and Alfonso Moreno
Part V. Reception: 19. Attic comedy in the rhetorical and moralising traditions Richard Hunter
20. Contexts of reception in antiquity Sebastiana Nervegna
21. The reception of Greek comedy in Rome Michael Fontaine
22. The transmission of comic texts Nigel Wilson
23. Snapshots of Aristophanes and Menander: from spontaneous reception to belated reception study Gonda Van Steen.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Theatre studies [AN]