Customer Reviews

Aristophanic Comedy

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Admittedly, Strauss' Socrates and Aristophanes is the best book of higher criticism on Aristophanes' remaining plays. Unfortunately, that book has a painful deficiency: Strauss overrates his readers, assuming they know their agon from their parabasis (a dubious assumption). Dover, while not where near so insightful, makes up for Strauss' deficiency by explaining the parts of the comedy, how they were staged and all the other practical details Strauss disdains. If you are a classical scholar, well maybe Dover's book is a waste of time. If not, then it is a valuable adjunct to Strauss( Better read before Strauss. I did it the other way. Not pretty.).

This is certainly the best serious introduction to Aristophanes you can find. He covers almost everything: his introductory chapters cover the textual evidence, stage directions, the comic theatre, play structure, parody. Having done that, he works through the plays using each play to examine a different aspect of Aristophanes and the comic theatre. There are a few pages on Aristophanes' predecessors and rivals, then a larger section on the nachleben - posterity - of Arisophanes' works, finishing with an examination of various translations (the latest translations discussed are those of the 1960s - naturally for a 1972 book) and adaptations. It's a book I can't recommend enough, academic without being obscure and clear without being patronizing.

Other general books on Aristophanes that you may find interesting have a more limited range. Russo's _Aristofane: Autore di teatro_ (translated as Aristophanes: An Author for the Stage) is excellent for just that - Aristophanes as a playwright of real plays. MacDowell's Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays is a more recent book, somewhat like Dover but more focussed on the plays rather than themes, and rather less useful in my opinion. For a major literary study, Silk's Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy might be tried.

For the Graecist, I recommend Willi's The Languages of Aristophanes: Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek (Oxford Classical Monographs). But that's for the more experienced.

Finally, as a very short - but intense - introduction, Ussher's Aristophanes (New Surveys in the Classics No 13) is excellent, and should be findable for five or so dollars second hand.

If you don't know your parabasis from your agon, your are probably better off starting your study of Aristophanes with this book than one that assumes more like Strauss' Socrates and Aristophanes. In this book, Dover gives you an overview of the structure of the Attic comedy, defines terms, explains how they were staged and selected for performance (all the mundane issues Strauss does not deign to cover). Strauss is, of course, still the undisputed champ in explaining the meaning of the plays, but you have a better chance of understanding his explanations if you've read Dover first. Crede experto. I did it the other way round.