Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy
Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon
9780226309699
9780226309729
Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy
Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon
The Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn in the humanities, Mario Telò explores a vital yet understudied question: how did this view of Aristophanes arise, and why did his popularity eventually eclipse that of his rivals?
Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Reviews
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader
Chapter 1: Delayed Applause: Competitive Aesthetics and the Construction of the Comic Canon Note to the Reader
1. Triumphant Failure: Peace, Clouds, and the Poetics of Hierarchy
2. Parabasis, Plot, and the Directionality of the Text
3. Affecting the Audience: Knights, Clouds, and the Feel of Comedy
2. Parabasis, Plot, and the Directionality of the Text
3. Affecting the Audience: Knights, Clouds, and the Feel of Comedy
Part 1: Wasps
Chapter 2: A Touch of Class: The Enduring Texture of Aristophanic Comedy
1. Converging Identities: Bdelycleon and Aristophanes between Parabasis and Plot
2. Contest of Cloaks: Restaging the First Clouds
3. The Daemons in the Details: Sensing the Cratinean Fashion
4. Aristophanic Fabric and Comic Canonicity
5. Conclusions
Chapter3: Emotional Rescue and Generic Demotion: Old Comedians and Tragedy’s Ragged Audience 2. Contest of Cloaks: Restaging the First Clouds
3. The Daemons in the Details: Sensing the Cratinean Fashion
4. Aristophanic Fabric and Comic Canonicity
5. Conclusions
1. Intersecting Affects: Tragic Love as Comic Disease
2. Anger and the Aesthetics of Alienation
3. Wrapping Walls: Affective Mimesis and Proto-Canonical Therapy
4. Ragged Feelings: The Comic Audience as a Tragic Parent
5. Conclusions
Chapter 4: The Broken Net: Comic Failure and Its Consequences 2. Anger and the Aesthetics of Alienation
3. Wrapping Walls: Affective Mimesis and Proto-Canonical Therapy
4. Ragged Feelings: The Comic Audience as a Tragic Parent
5. Conclusions
1. An Iambic Erinys: Cratinus, Affect, and Tragic Havoc
2. Aesopic Agonistics: Fables and Comic Redress
3. Undoing Failure: Dire Dancing and Ersatz Liberation
4. Conclusions
2. Aesopic Agonistics: Fables and Comic Redress
3. Undoing Failure: Dire Dancing and Ersatz Liberation
4. Conclusions
Part 2: Clouds
Chapter 5: Aristophanes’ Electra Complex and the Future of Comedy
1. Aristophanes’ Oresteia
2. The Comic Stage as Tragic Classroom: The Audience Meets Socrates (and Eupolis)
3. Stripping Strepsiades: Socrates, Eupolis, Clytemnestra
4. Revision as Revenge: Stolen Cloaks and Suffocating Sons
5. Conclusions
Epilogue 2. The Comic Stage as Tragic Classroom: The Audience Meets Socrates (and Eupolis)
3. Stripping Strepsiades: Socrates, Eupolis, Clytemnestra
4. Revision as Revenge: Stolen Cloaks and Suffocating Sons
5. Conclusions
1. “Fail Better”
2. Canonicity: Reenactment, Literary Affections, Enduring Objects
3. Affect: Touch, Vibrant Objects, Intertextuality
2. Canonicity: Reenactment, Literary Affections, Enduring Objects
3. Affect: Touch, Vibrant Objects, Intertextuality
Synopses
Bibliography
Index
Bibliography
Index
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