Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the CanonThe 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. |
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Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon Mario Telò Limited preview - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
action Aeschylus Aesop aesthetic affect ancient anger appearance argued Aristophanes assimilation associated audience’s Bdelycleon beginning Biles body brings canonical chapter character chlaina Chorus cloak comedy comic audience comic mode connection construction contest contrast court Cratinean Cratinus Cratinus’s critics dancing defeat described desis discourse discussion disease dramatic Electra emotional Eupolis Euripides expression fable failure father fevers figures final force himation idea infantile Knights language lines lusis madness man’s material mode narrative object observed offered opposition parabasis parabatic passage paternal performance Phaedra’s Pheidippides Philocleon’s phortikē kōmōidia physical play plot poet poetic position presents prologue protective proto-canonical reading recent reference reflected relationship resembles rivals role scene second Clouds seems seen semnotēs sense similar Socrates sōphrosunē spectators stage Strepsiades suggests symbolic therapeutic tion tragedy tragic tribōn turn Wasps Xanthias Xanthias’s