A.M. Bowie, Aristophanes. Myth, Ritual and Comedy

Review of A. M. Bowie, Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy

This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the first edition of Francis Cornford's The Origin of Attic Comedy, a book that sought the origins and essence of Old Comedy in "primitive" ritual, cult, and myth. The sub-title of Bowie's book on Aristophanes might lead one to expect that he is continuing the project begun by Cornford, and the fact that Cambridge has published both books, even if a ...

Aristophanes on Tragedy

Fifty years before Aristotle wrote his Poetics, Aristophanes had devoted two comedies, Thesmophoriazusae (411) and Frogs (405), to the subject of tragedy. In both plays the plot shows the education of the main character in the nature of tragedy. Euripides learns in Thesmophoriazusae that he must present noble and not base women in his dramas. His depiction of perverse women in the theatre had m...

The Ionian at Aristophanes

Aristotle's Theory of Comedy

<193>Aristotle, in his Poetics, claimed that tragedy, “through pity and fear, accomplishes the catharsis of such emotions (di j ejlevou kai; fovbou peraivnousa th;n tw'n toiouvtwn paqhmavtwn kavqarsin) (Poet. 1449b27f.) .” It has been argued that the medical purgation theory of the musical catharsis in Politics is the key phrase for the interpretation of tragic catharsis, where he says, those w...

Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae And The Nature Of Tragedy

Two generations before Aristotle wrote his celebrated treatise on what the nature of tragic mimesis (or imitation) is, the comic poet Aristophanes had written two plays about the subject, Thesmophoriazusae and the more celebrated Frogs. The first play has the poet Euripides as its hero, and the second the god Dionysus. This god is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman, and at a festival in his hon...