K. Sidwell, Aristophanes the democrat: the politics of satirical comedy during the Peloponnesian War

Keith Sidwell, Aristophanes the democrat: the politics of satirical comedy during the Peloponnesian War. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xv, 407 p.

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• ISBN 9780521519984.

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Présentation de l'éditeur:

This book provides a new interpretation of the nature of Old Comedy and its place at the heart of Athenian democratic politics. Professor Sidwell argues that Aristophanes and his rivals belonged to opposing political groups, each with their own political agenda. Through disguised caricature and parody of their rivals' work, the poets expressed and fuelled the political conflict between their factions. Professor Sidwell rereads the principal texts of Aristophanes and the fragmented remains of the work of his rivals in the light of his arguments for the political foundations of the genre.

Keith Sidwell is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies, University of Calgary. He has written on Greek drama, later Greek literature – including, most recently, Lucian: Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches (2004) – and on Neo-Latin writing, and is a co-author of the Reading Greek and Reading Latin series, and author of Reading Medieval Latin (1995).

Table des matières:

Detail of illustration viii

Preface ix

Acknowledgements xii

List of abbreviations xiv

PART I SETTING THE STAGE 1

1             Getting to grips with the politics of Old Comedy 3

2             Metacomedy and politics 31

3             Metacomedy and caricature 45

PART II THE POETS' WAR 105

4             Acharnians: Parabasis versus play 107

5             Metacomedy, caricature and politics from Knights to Peace 155

6             Metacomedy, caricature and politics from Autolycus to Frogs 217

Conclusions and consequences 299

PART III      APPENDICES 303

Appendix 1    The view from the theatron 305

Appendix 2    Metacomedy and caricature in the surviving fourth-century plays of Aristophanes 337

Appendix 3    Timeline and proposed relationships between comedies 341

Appendix 4    The date of Eupolis' Taxiarchoi 346

Appendix 5    Clouds 868–73 and τραυλίζω 349

Appendix 6    Michael Vickers on Strepsiades and Pericles 350

Bibliography 352

Index 363

Index Locorum 382

Index of Modern Scholars 406