Poetic Values and Poetic Technique in Aristophanes

Bibliographic Data

ID11817512
AuthorsLeslie Collins Edwards (University of California San Diego, corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume19
Issue2
Pages143-159
Publication date1990-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRamus (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0048-671X • E-ISSN: 2202-932X
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0048671x00002897
OpenAlexW2495647697
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

At Wasps 57-66, Aristophanes distinguishes his comedy from humor of the vulgar ( phortikē ) Megarian sort. Elsewhere he boasts that his comedy is more intellectual, for it is clever and wise ( Clouds 548, 522); and alleges that his rivals write comedy which aims only at laughs and relies for this purpose on vulgar props and language, while his comedy is primarily verbal ( epea, Clouds 544), conceptual ( ideai, dianoiai, Clouds 547; Peace 750; etc.), innovative ( kainon ti, Wasps 1044, 1053; Clouds 547), and infused with modesty ( sōphrosunē, Knights 545, Clouds 537; etc.). It goes without saying that any and all of these claims, made within a comedy, ought not to be taken entirely innocently. Nor, however, ought they to be dismissed as mere nonsense, for they contain what is an important contradiction within the logic of the dialectic between old and new so fundamental to comedy; it is a contradiction which runs throughout Aristophanes' discussion of his comedy, yet which is encapsulated in the first parabasis of Clouds . Here the poet identifies with the avant-garde; yet his poetry is modest ( sōphron ) and he scorns the manners — the hairstyle, to be exact ( ou komō , 545) — of the affected or decadent young of his day, although a sign of being refined ( kompsos ). Aristophanes in his posture of innovator shows impatience with the traditional inasmuch as it is repetitive; yet he also claims a position of priority and moral sensibility incompatible with the posture of innovator within the terms of his own comedy. Moreover, Aristophanes situates the antithesis between old and new within an overt hierarchy in which the old, although preferred for its moral authority, is continually being usurped by the new: sophistic rhetoric has appropriated the vocabulary which both sides of the opposition must employ and has, by controlling the terms and context, informed the debate between them

Art · Comedy · Contradiction · Dialectic · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Sensibility · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophy

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