Modern Scholarship: Comedies. Flashcards
“Tragedy is much easier to write than comedy, in which everything has to be invented afresh.”
Burian.
“In comedy, there is an ingrained tendency for the norms of ordinary life to be suspended, subverted or even turned on their heads.”
Cartledge.
“[Frogs is] the finest of Arisophanes’ surviving plays.”
Cartledge.
“The primary function of the play, however, is not literary criticism, but political action.”
Bettendorf.
“…it does seems pretty clear that the contribution of Aristophanes to comedy was overwhelming and unique, that it was he abpve all who shaped the genre of Old Comedy.”
Cartledge.
“Farce or fantasy might be more appropriate descriptions of what Aristohanes created.”
Storey/Allen.
“The core of the ancient comic experience was the chorus and the core of the comic chorus was the parabasis.”
C. W. Marshall.
“At Athens, comedy was probably very political from its very beginnings.”
Alan Sommerstein.
“The idea of the festival is inseparable from Greek comedy.”
Edith Hall.
“The traits given to Aeschylus and Euripides are amusing, and the contrast between them makes comic sense, but they are without value as an index of how either Aristophanes or his contemporaries really regarded them.”
Kovaks (Aeschylus and Euripides in reality)
- however, there must be some value.
- some of their behaviour must be rooted in reality - just blown massively out of proportion for comedic effect.
