Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Compared with W. von Christ's Teubner text of 1878, the 1965 Oxford text of the Poetics by R. Kassel reveals a great diminution in the..." (more)
Key Phrases: veiled abuse, iambic element, vulgar dancing, New Comedy, Old Comedy, Lane Cooper (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a splendidly vigorous book. Whatever the truth about TC [Tractatus Coislinianus], Janko’s conclusions must be taken seriously.…" -- Jonathan Barnes

'This is a splendidly vigorous book. Janko presents his case with enthusiasm and panache. He is forthright in expressing his own views and in denouncing the errors of other scholars. His arguments, some of them complex, are invariably clear - and often deliciously clever. Whatever the truth about TC [Tractatus Coislinianus], Janko's conclusions must be taken seriously.... No reader will be able to stay silent about this fascinating book' Jonathan Barnes, Phronesis

Product Description

In 1839 the Tractatus Coislinianus, a summarized treatise on comedy, was published from a tenth-century manuscript. Its discoverer suggested that it derived from the lost second book of Aristotle’s Poetics, which inaugurated the systematic study of comedy, but it was soon condemned as an ignorant compilation verging on forgery, and thus matters stood until the first publication of "Aristotle on Comedy" in 1984. Richard Janko’s edition of the text is accompanied by a facing translation, interpretive essays, reconstruction and commentary. The book is now made available in paperback for the first time, with a new Preface and additional bibliography.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Duckworth Publishers (March 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0715631691
• ISBN-13: 978-0715631690
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #520,868 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Only Man between Animals Can Laugh" (Aristotle), January 17, 2006

By	Amore Roberto "Amore Roberto" (Pinerolo -Turin- ITALY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the story of an ancient manuscript of the X century, known as "Coislinianus 120" (now at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris) after the name of his last owner, a French collector of XVII century.
This manuscript, that once belonged to the monastery of Great Lavra on Mounth Athos, was sent to Seguier de Coislin from Cyprus by father Athanasios Rethor in 1643.
It was ignored for almost two centuries, until in 1839 J.A.Cramer, a classical scholar, analyzing its content, a rather haphazard collection of patristic and Aristotelian extracts, found what he believed to be "the words... of a commentator on Aristotle's (lost) treatise on the art of poetry".
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This is also the tale of a fascination with a book: Aristotle's almost mythical Second Book of Poetics, whose quest has been as enthusiastic as that of the mythical Holy Grail.
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Readers acquainted with Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" will remember the plot of the novel, based on this fabled book.
And yet there is not even certainty that Aristotle did effectively write this second treatise, but for some allusions and scattered, highly debated citations (the philosopher wrote also a book "On Poets" also lost and often confused with the two Poetics).
In any case, unlike Poetics I, this book did not survive the Middle Age.
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Poetics I was respected but not widely appreciated in the classical times.
It was during the Renaissance that Aristotle's Poetics ended to be one of the emblems of the new culture, being printed, translated, commented, revered and debated for more than two centuries, until the famous "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes" in late XVII century France.
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Being so important to the new sensibility, it was almost natural for some scholars to begin wondering what Poetics II could have said: in the XVI century some of them began attempts to reconstruct the lost second book.
It was from one of these attempts Umberto Eco got the inspiration for "The name of the Rose" (see N.A. Basbanes - Patience and Fortitude, pag.222-223).
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Richard Janko's "Aristotle on Comedy. Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II" is a very specific book.
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It is first of all the critical text of the manuscript, presented with in original Greek text with English translation and the usual linguistic comments.
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It is a scientific and highly interesting attempt of restoration of the original unabridged content, through a collection of passages from other extant works of the Greek philosophers.
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It is lastly a curious specimen of the amazing tools of classical philology in deepening our knowledge of an ancient text, of its transmission and of the original shape it did have.
Not casually Janko introduce his work with three different citations: the first rather predictably from Aristotle, of the other two one from Eco and one from Conan Doyle - as to remark the investigative dimension of his work.
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Janko's case is well presented and well defended.
He demonstrates the terms used in the treatise are in quantity (about 90%) and quality consistent with those used in other Aristotle's work.
This excludes the suspect of a later Byzantine forgery.
He demonstrates all the references to ancient comedy are consistent with the period in which Aristotle lived (noteworthy is the absence of Menander, the second most important Greek play-writer after Aristophanes, who began to stage his comedies a few years after the death of the philosopher).
This absence is restricting the time-span of composition of the original source of the Coisliniaus.
He ends up showing that the work is consistent with Aristotelian ideas (specially with regard to ethics and catharsis), as opposed to the theories of Theophrastus, an other likely author of this work.
Language, references, inner consistency: all points to Aristotle.
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Yet this attribution leaves many other questions open to debate.
Why wasn't this work so widely known as Poetics I ?
When and why was it definitively lost ?
How was made the original source of the Coislinianus?
This is the qualitative part of the analysis, made mostly of guesses and hypotheses.
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While the First book on Poetics dealt with Tragedy, a genre already established and codified, Poetics II was dealing with a genre that was still changing and far different from the "modern" comedy, the one we today use to associate with the genre and created especially by the plays of Menander.
So while Poetics I was still valid in its interpretation, Poetics II was apparently obsolete soon after its composition.
This situation was crucial in the change from scrolls to parchment since Poetics II was not copied in the new form and soon it was lost for ever.
Janko is also able to deduce from textual errors that the original source of the Coislinianus had to be written in Greek minuscule, this one possibly already a copy from a former scroll in capital letters.
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I still did not mention the content of Poetics II - and will not mention, since this is the classic case in which shape is more important than content. Besides this review is already growing a bit too long, and I didn't perceive any conspicuous contribution to the study of Aristotelian ideas.
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As I mentioned earlier, this is a very specific work.
It is best suited to scholars and unfortunately the author doesn't do much to please a lay reader (some Greek citations are even presented with no translation).
No effort is done to introduce the relevant points to a non scholarly reader: the period in which was written, the systems of transmissions, the terms of the Aristotelian debate both in the ancient times and Renaissance, and lastly a panorama of the different opinions on the authenticity of the work.
None the less it remains a hugely interesting work and the author is no doubt worthy of the warmest praise.

If you kept reading to these last lines, there is a chance you may be interested in other works I had the chance to read about the same topic. Unfortunately, the most interesting is in Italian and still not translated to date into English:
- Luciano Canfora - " Un mestiere Pericoloso. La Vita quotidiana dei filosofi Greci" (Sellerio). Canfora is both an important Greek scholars and an excellent writer. In the chapters dedicated to Aristotle he relays the fascinating story of the transmission of the Corpus Aristotelicum. Actually all the essoteric (from the Greek prefix EXO- "outside") works of the philosopher (those he willingly published during his life) have been totally lost. We have most of the esoteric (from the Greek prefix ESO- "inside") works, those intended for private use and lectures. Aristotle died 322 b.C. and left all these manuscripts to his family and they were completely disregarded and almost forgotten until Sulla included them in the booty after the war against Mitridathes (86 b.c).
Not scholarly but mentioned and/or relevant to this theme:
- Umberto Eco - "The name of the Rose". This is a must read, both for its huge learning and for its almost perfect Borgesian plot. Eco is an uneven writer, but this is undoubtedly his masterpiece. I was amused in comparing the opening lines of the lost book as imagined in this novel and as recreated in the essay.
- Nicholas A. Basbanes - "Patience and Fortitude" Rather average - and sometimes dull: relevant here for the interview with Umberto Eco about the sources of inspiration for his novel.
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You are most welcome if you can suggest other books about the same theme or just share ideas and comments!
Thanks for reading.