1975, ISBN: 9780520022119

University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles, 1972. 1st ed. XV,253p. ills.(B&W photographs). Paperback. Spine with two light reading traces. 'Dover reconstructs Athenian… Plus…

University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles, 1972. 1st ed. XV,253p. ills.(B&W photographs). Paperback. Spine with two light reading traces. 'Dover reconstructs Athenian public opinion to determine what attitudes and characters Aristophanes was able to exploit for comic effect. He supports his interpretations with evidence from drama, rhetoric, philosophy, history, art, and the law of Athens. (...) The book is so crammed with information (...) on all aspects of Greek life that one can almost imagine himself sitting in the theatre in Athens laughing at the same jokes as the rest of the audience. In the last chapter, Dover provides a classic justification for reading a dead author like Aristophanes. 'The moral utility of reading the works of a dead author - and whether he died this morning or two thousand years ago makes no essential difference - lies, I suggest, not in the possibility of doing what he appears to recommend and refraining from what he appears to forbid, but in two other directions. First by adding his experience to ours we can look through his eyes at elements of human life which are common to his culture and ours, and can thus criticize and adjust our assumptions and attitudes, as we can also by understanding and absorbing the experience of contemporary individuals whose lives and environments differ from our own. Secondly, in so far as art is an aspect of our nature, on a part with exercise, religion, sex, and work, enjoying literature is better than not enjoying it, and the effort to relive the intellectual and aesthetic proces through which an ancient dramatist gave a play its final form has some claim to be a self-rewarding activity.' (p.228). 'Aristophanic Comedy' has great value for anyone seeking enlightenment and entertainment, but it offers more to the classicist. It is a model for the theacher who hope to pass on his love and knowledge of Greek culture and his own certainty of its rewards.' (LOUIS SETTLER SPATZ in The Classical Journal, 1975,4, p.71)., 0<

ISBN: 9780520022119

Professor Dover's newest book is designed for those who are interested in the history of comedy as an art form but who are not necessarily familiar with the Greek language.The eleven surv… Plus…

Professor Dover's newest book is designed for those who are interested in the history of comedy as an art form but who are not necessarily familiar with the Greek language.The eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes are treated as representative of a genre. Old Attic Comedy, which was artistically and intellectually homogeneous and gave expression to the spirit of Athenian society in the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C. Aristophanes is regarded primarily not as a reformer or propagandist but as a dramatist who sought, in competition with his rivals, to win the esteem both of the general public and of the cultivated and critical minority. He succeeded in this effort by making people laugh, and the book pays more attention than has generally been paid to the technical means, whether of language or of situation, on which Aristophanes' humor depends. Particular emphasis is laid on his indifference-positively assisted by the physical limitations of the Greek theatre and the conditions of the Athenian dramatic festivals-to the maintenance of continuous "dramatic illusion" or to the provision of a dramatic event with the antecedents and consequences which might logically be expected. More importance is attached to Aristophanes' adoption of popular attitudes and beliefs, to his creation of uninhibited characters with which the spectators could identify themselves, and to his acceptance of the comic poet's traditional role as a mordant but jocular critic of morals, than to any identifiable and consistent elements in his political standpoint. Media > Book, [PU: University of California Press]<