Tragedy on the Comic Stage
Matthew C. Farmer
Abstract
Tragedy on the Comic Stage collects and analyzes the evidence for Ancient Greek comedy’s engagement with its contemporary dramatic genre, tragedy. Beginning with the comic fragments, this monograph argues that the comic poets of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE depicted a “culture of tragedy” in their plays. Comedy’s culture of tragedy involved a consistent set of tropes shared across the genre, including depictions of tragic fandom, portrayal of tragic poets as characters, and use of references to the dramatic festivals. The other prominent mode of engagement with tragedy in this period was ... More
Tragedy on the Comic Stage collects and analyzes the evidence for Ancient Greek comedy’s engagement with its contemporary dramatic genre, tragedy. Beginning with the comic fragments, this monograph argues that the comic poets of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE depicted a “culture of tragedy” in their plays. Comedy’s culture of tragedy involved a consistent set of tropes shared across the genre, including depictions of tragic fandom, portrayal of tragic poets as characters, and use of references to the dramatic festivals. The other prominent mode of engagement with tragedy in this period was parody; this book argues that tragic parody in the comic fragments must be read as a complex, subtle form of allusion requiring a connoisseurship of tragedy for full understanding. Having established these forms of paratragedy in the comic fragments, Tragedy on the Comic Stage presents a series of readings of intact comedies by Aristophanes that exemplify tragic culture and tragic parody, focusing on Wasps, Women at the Thesmophoria, and Wealth.
Keywords:
Greek comedy,
Aristophanes,
Greek tragedy,
paratragedy,
parody,
Old Comedy,
Middle Comedy
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190492076 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190492076.001.0001 |
