Love Plots in Menander and his Roman Adapters
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9308811 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William S Anderson (0000-0003-0958-050X, University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1984 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 124-134 |
| Publication date | 1984-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ramus (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0048-671X • E-ISSN: 2202-932X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0048671x00003556 |
| OpenAlex | W2483620277 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 24 |
| References cited | 1 |
It is a well known fact and problem for students of Plautus and Terence that the lack of corresponding Menandrian originals for the comedies known to have been adapted into Latin has forced us to operate with various conjectural theories about the amount and method of change introduced in their adapted plots by the Roman playwrights. We might have expected Donatus to have provided some help here, since he frequently cites the Greek lines that Terence altered in his own way, but Donatus proves remarkably disappointing when it comes to details of plot. There is, however, one passage in Menander's great admirer, Plutarch, which I suggest might be pressed somewhat into service, though cautiously, and it is my purpose here to discuss this passage and its potential utility. Among the questions debated at banquets, Plutarch introduces one which, reviewing what drama and poetry best suit a dinner party, singles out Menander for special praise. His speaker, Diogenianus by name, expresses total admiration for Menander's style, for his excellent mixture of playful and serious, and his appropriate handling of the erotic material of his comedies. I am interested in the last point and the way Diogenianus elaborates upon it. For him, the important point is that, after a reading of Menander at a symposium, male banqueters are put in the right mood to go home to their own wives. I do not wish to pursue that chauvinistic topic, but rather to examine the scheme of Menandrian love plots which Diogenianus develops by way of explaining his thesis that Greek New Comedy possesses a special propriety for the average male banqueter
Admiration · Art · Drama · Linguistics · Literature · Plot (graphics · Point (geometry · Praise · Reading (process · Style (visual arts · Wish · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Mathematics · Philosophy
Laughter
Fourth-century comedy before Menander
Performing gender in Greek Old and New Comedy
Epicharmus and early Sicilian comedy
The rivals of Aristophanes and Menander
Character types
Comedy and Athenian festival culture
Snapshots of Aristophanes and Menander
Comedy and Athenian law
Attic comedy in the rhetorical and moralising traditions
The politics of Greek comedy
Dramatic technique and Athenian comedy
Contexts of reception in antiquity
The reception of Greek comedy in Rome
The Greek ‘comic hero’
Theiconography of comedy
Divinity and religious practice
Women and the Comic Plot in Menander
Performance and Identity in the Classical World
The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy
The Character of Bacchis in Terence's Heautontimorumenos
Comic Sex and ‘Fragmentary Thinking’
Designing Women
Menander's "Thais" and the Roman Poets
| Unique citing works | 24 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,77 |
| Citation span | 1995 - 2022 (28) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 24 |